Six students from Grace Dodge Career & Technical High School in the Bronx, dressed in prim business attire, argued gamely in a wood paneled courtroom in Manhattan Criminal Court for three hours Tuesday night. The stakes were as high for the student litigators as they were for the fictional defendant on trial, a woman accused of assault with a tire iron.
This was an elimination round in the citywide moot court and mock trial competitions coordinated by the New York State Bar Association and the Justice Resource Center. Ninety-five schools citywide take part in the competition, and on Tuesday they were down to 32.
Grace Dodge's team was playing prosecutor in the case, with a team from Hunter College High School defending the accused.
In the end, the defense team won the round, according to the lawyer who judged the competition, meaning that Hunter will be among 16 schools competing on Thursday for the top spot in the city.
But for Grace Dodge, reaching this far in the competition was a bittersweet moment, considering the school, in the Belmont section of the Bronx, is one of 23 schools targeted for closing this year because they were deemed under-performing. Grace Dodge will be phased-out over three years.
Pre-trial jitters were high, especially among the rookies. "Don't be intimidated,” Adonis Ramirez, 17, a junior, told his teammates as he hugged a classmate. “We live in a place where people get shot at."
Grace Dodge is a career and technical education school, providing vocational training to students in business, cosmetology, health and law. Before Tuesday night's loss, Grace Dodge was 3-0 in the 2012 mock trial tournament, and they had gotten there with the encouragement of their coach, Basil Manolakos, a former lawyer, and the help of Loeb & Loeb, a law firm on Park Avenue that has worked with the school since 2009.
This is the most success the Grace Dodge team has seen. But the team's future is uncertain, a result of the ripple effects caused by the city's decision to close or phase out schools. No one knows whether the team will survive, and even their coach doesn't know whether he will stay on at the school after this year.
“I’m conflicted between self-interest and students,” said Mr. Manolakos, who has been at the school for 10 years. “I’m heartbroken because I wanted to spend the rest of my career here. Now the most I have here is three years, and I don’t want to be stuck on a sinking ship.”
The mock trial team Mr. Manolakos leads includes 16 students who practice weekly at Loeb & Loeb, where lawyers who worked with them covered different aspects of preparing for legal competition -- analyzing issues, drafting arguments and questions and honing oral advocacy skills.
“In many ways the school’s impending closure contributed to making this the most challenging semester since Loeb was partnered with the school, but the students have shown tremendous motivation and they should be extremely proud of their accomplishment,” Mark Douglas, a Loeb & Loeb associate who spearheads the firm’s work with Grace Dodge, said in a statement.
One of their eight Loeb & Loeb mentors is a Grace Dodge alumni, Mark Douglas, 31, a commercial litigation attorney. Mr. Douglas said he’s sad to see the school close but not surprised. He remembers a school with many problems that he has seen grow worse, affecting the mock trial team.
“One of our students could no longer compete because he was involved in a choking incident at school,” Mr. Douglas said. “Another had been attacked around the school.”
The students from the mock trial team have mixed feelings about Grace Dodge closing. Orvick Medina, 17, a junior, said students are responsible for the school’s phase out.
“We’re basically from the hood, where slacking off is accepted,” Orvick said.
Another team member, Nelson Carrillo, 17, a senior, said he used to be shy and struggled with English, but he said he has gained confidence from his involvement with the competition. During the trial, Nelson regularly leaped from his seat to raise objections, and earned commendations from the presiding judge.
Nelson said he even used his mock trial training to defend Grace Dodge at one of the many public hearings the Department of Education held to consider the question of whether to close the school.
“I talked about how programs like this changed our lives,” he said. “It helps us really understand how the law works, because sooner or later I’m going to law school.”
Nelson will be attending John Jay College in the fall, and he said Mr. Manolakos was a key reason many students were attracted to the law track.
Mr. Manolakos, who lives in Westchester, was a trust and estate lawyer in the financial district. He left the legal profession he said, “because it just didn’t feel like it was what I was supposed to do with my life.” Yet he said he’s delaying an inevitable decision about his career.
He has received an informal offer from the assistant principal at another school. But, surrounded by his team, he didn’t want to think about it. These are the decisions that many teachers, administrators and other staff members are making in the nearly 50 schools that are slated to be phased out or closed at the end of the school year.
At the competition, Mr. Manolakos, in a pin-striped suit with a white shirt and white tie, decided to play five rookies out of the six on the team. One senior got a part time job and had to back out, another had college prep classes. He also felt the rookies had worked hard and deserved a chance.
Mr. Manolkos said he's learning to count the moral victories.
“We lost soundly, not ugly,” Mr. Manolakos said. “The way you get better as a team is you never blame the kids. You think what you can do as coach. I'm already thinking about what to improve and if it will work -- assuming I'm still here.”