ALBANY -- A 40-year effort to reach Albany's most difficult students in their own separate small-school setting has come to an end.


This fall, the Albany school district will phase out the Harriet Gibbons High School by folding it into Albany High School. The unique ninth-grade academy was an attempt to reduce the dropout rate of students at an age when they are most in danger of leaving school, but has been controversial in recent years because it isolated troubled students and had a student body that was almost entirely black.


Part of the program will be preserved at Albany High, Albany Superintendent Raymond Colucciello said. Its 24 staff and faculty members will be reassigned to other roles in the district and students will take some classes with their peers.


He said district officials are committed to rapidly remaking programs that are not working and that more changes are to come. Harriet Gibbons was selected first because district data has found that only a small percentage of its students actually went on to graduate from high school, he said.


"We're taking 73 kids and we have to change things for them, for the better," he said. "Change is going to have to happen quickly at the high school."


Colucciello said the sudden move is the first step in the state-mandated reworking of Albany High. Last week, a scathing report by the state Education Department blasted the school's academic performance and its low graduation rate for minority students. One of the suggestions was the immediate elimination of ineffective programs.


Harriet Gibbons was designed to serve 200 ninth-graders. It was most recently located in an uninspiring former grocery store on Watervliet Avenue. Of late, some in the district had even pushed to expand its reach to 10th graders as well.


The children who attended Harriet Gibbons were the hardest to reach, students moved through middle school by social promotion and who failed state standardized exams in eighth grade. More than 90 percent were minorities and virtually all are eligible for the free lunch program, a key poverty indicator, according to the district. Among those who walked its halls were children who later died by gunshot as well as those who turned their life around after getting extra needed attention.


In an effort to engage them in learning, Harriet Gibbons offered its students a smaller setting -- 15 students per classroom -- longer hours, extra staff and daily teacher conferences. There were also University at Albany mentors and a theater program. Students received individual attention to prepare them for the rigors of Albany High.


Scores of Albany students have attended the school. It was founded as the Street Academy in 1970 by Sacred Heart nuns as an alternative high school for students who weren't achieving in a traditional setting. In 1974, the school joined the city district and was named for its first principal, Harriet Gibbons. It was housed at sites on Clinton, Western and Sheridan avenues before moving to 75 Watervliet Ave. in 2002.


The district will be making a number of changes in the coming months, particularly to its alternative education offerings, Colucciello said. Even before the report was released, a group of educators, parents and community members were re-imagining the district's alternative programs. The task force has spent months working on the project and one of its key recommendations is to reduce reliance on "pull out" programs that isolate children from their peers.


More alternative programs are expected to be streamlined or eliminated in the near future.


"Schools typically don't like to cut programs, they like to add them" Colucciello said. "You have to be more focused on which one is working."


Scott Waldman can be reached at 454-5080 or by e-mail at swaldman@timesunion.com.