TRENTON – The high school graduation rate at this inner city school is 100 percent. Ditto for kids going on to college.

Oh, and scholarships for those colleges?

How about 48 kids splitting $6 million toward those hefty college bills, including some of the top schools in the country, like Princeton and Cornell universities.

That's the track record at St. Mary of the Assumption High School in the city of Elizabeth, a hardscrabble place like virtually all the rest of New Jersey's cities and among the 13 that would be covered by the Opportunity Scholarship Act.

“We work hard at it,” says Janet Malko, principal of the school for the past 23 years.

To a devil's advocate question on whether the kids are merely pushed through to reach the 100 percent graduation figure, Malko responds with the other numbers – about how many go on to college and the amount of college scholarship money given to her students.

“Colleges don't just give that kind of money away,” she says as evidence of the hard work put in at St. Mary's.

There's no social promotion at St. Mary's, she says, and no dropouts either. This at a time when New Jersey's urban areas often see dropout rates of one in two, or 50 percent, and higher.

“We have small classes and individual attention,” Malko said as she headed toward the big yellow school bus that brought her and more than a dozen of her students to the capital for today's rally in support of the proposed Opportunity Scholarship Act.

She likes the act – which opponents say will drain resources from the public schools – as a means to help children and her school.

Enrollment at the largely minority school is now at 215 students, far below what the principal would like to see. But the tuition of $5,700 per child annually is simply unaffordable for so many of the working poor who might otherwise send their children.

“If we can get some extra help, we could fill the building,” she said.

Fill the building with smart and sweet young people like St. Mary's senior Alexa Chandler of Roselle.

“More than 50 percent of kids are failing,” Chandler says as to why she supports the scholarship act. “They shouldn't be judged by their zip codes.”

Alexa and several classmates gathered around her on the fringe of today's rally were asked to describe the public high schools they would otherwise be going to, schools in Newark, Irvington, Elizabeth.

“Ghetto,” came the response from one girl. And then the words started to spill out like shots from a gang-banger’s semi-automatic pistol from each of a half-dozen kids gathered around in a circle. “Negative. Dangerous. Police. Hostile.”

“They have metal detectors going into those schools,” said Andy Hilaire, a St. Mary's 11^th grader from Orange.

But Alexa and her classmates already have their place in the sun. Why come to a rally when their present and college-bound futures are all set?

“We're not selfish,” says Alexa's classmate, Anita Alli of Irvington. “They're just like me,” she adds of children going to places like Irvington High, where she would be now were it not for a scholarship from the Sisters of Mercy. “If we can get scholarships, why can't they?”

Then Andy Hilaire, the St. Mary's 11^th grader, piped up with his reason for coming.

“To help people get the same opportunity I have. Even though it won't affect us,” he added, “it'll affect the rest of the world and we'll make history. We'll make a change.”

Earlier story:

Parochial school students descend on Trenton to call for controversial scholarships