Drew Zerbe

Drew’s curly hair is dyed bright orange to match his CEP honors polo. He wears a camouflage tank top underneath his standard-issue shirt and says he was kicked out of Lamar for hugging another guy. “He found out that I was bisexual and he said that I was sexually harassing him — even though the hug was totally not an issue before he found out,” says Drew, 16. “It obviously wasn’t sexual — he’s the ugliest kid in the world and it was above the shoulders — it was like he was a little puppy.”

Drew’s a straight-edge vegetarian who spends his spare time feeding the homeless, hanging out with his girlfriend and seeing punk rock shows. At Lamar, his grades were mainly D’s (Drew believes in enjoying life and doesn’t think school should be his top priority), and he had dress code violations for wearing patches on his shorts. “It never said ‘kill this’ or ‘revolution that,’ it was just ‘bread and water,’ ” he says.

When Drew moved to Houston two years ago, his mother brought reports from Philadelphia psychologists explaining that Drew spent years in counseling for impulse-control issues and that he’s been diagnosed with “oppositional defiant behavior” (which means he’s argumentative and doesn’t like authority). She asked HISD to test Drew for special ed and said he might need emotional support or counseling. “Of course, that never occurred,” says his mom, Jan Bullard, an attorney for NASA. “He never once got any kind of help — despite many trips to the school, despite me begging for help.”

“They want cookie-cutter kids. My kid is not cut out of a cookie cutter.”

After meeting with Lamar’s vice principal, Jan wanted to send Drew to live with his father in Atlanta, but Drew didn’t want to be separated from his girlfriend. So Jan enrolled him in what she calls “the schoolfor hoods.”

“I know where he is all day for a change,” she says. “I know he’s not out going and picketing Burger King, getting arrested or wandering the school property.”

Her son says it’s causing stress for the whole family. He gets home from school late and he wants to go out with his friends instead of hanging out having a family dinner. “I don’t have time for anything. My mom gets upset — I’m never at home and I’m always edgy,” he says. “I’m gonna have a breakdown.”

His mother says her stress is just a reflection of his stress. “He’s argumentative and nasty and hard to deal with. But this is part and parcel of why Drew needs something other than that cookie-cutter approach to education. He’s a kid who has always had high anxiety levels and very low impulse control, and this school district didn’t seem interested in Drew as an individual. Fixing those problems could have fixed the other problems that go along with them.

“I have a kid who didn’t want to be educated. He seemed unmotivated, uninterested — although it’s very funny now; he’s thinking he’ll go to college and become a teacher.”

Drew took algebra in seventh grade, yet CEP has him doing multiplication tables. “It’s just hard to watch Drew tank himself,” Jan says. “He’s doomed to fail there.”