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SARAH J. GLOVER / Staff photographer

Members of West Philly's automotive academy gather around one of the energy-efficient cars they are building for the $10 million X PRIZE contest. They've already made the first cut.

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READER FEEDBACK

Ronnie Polaneczky: City high-school kids best MIT in $10M car contest

By Ronnie Polaneczky
Philadelphia Daily News

Daily News Columnist

As I wander among the West Philly High School students milling about a noisy garage a few blocks from their school, I can't help thinking, "MIT must be sick of these kids."

MIT, of course, is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the country's august science, technology and engineering university. Its alums have scored Nobel Prizes, founded companies like Intel and headed prestigious schools like Harvard and Johns Hopkins.

West Philadelphia High, as we all know, is a school dealing with every scourge of the inner city. The fallout of poverty, crime and family dysfunction play out daily in its ancient, neglected halls at 47th and Walnut, challenging teachers to keep good kids above the fray and wayward kids from causing it.

So tell me:

If you learned that MIT and West Philly had entered a $10 million, international contest to produce a car that gets 100 mpg, which school would you expect to make it through the first qualifying round of the competition?

Answer: Not MIT.

"Yeah, we beat out MIT," smiles West Philly junior Daniel Moore as he shows me the Harley Davidson 1340 motorcycle engine that he and fellow students are retrofitting for one of two cars they're building in the school's garage on Hanson Street.

"We brag about that a little. But we still want to win the big prize. We want to design the cars of the future."

You know that movie "Stand and Deliver"? About the struggling Los Angeles high-school kids who mastered calculus, inspired by teacher Jaime Escalante's belief that they were capable of the rigorous study that the difficult math required?

At West Philly, Simon Hauger, Ron Preiss, Jerry DiLossi and Ann Cohen are the same kind of teachers, and their students the same kind of kids.

Eleven years ago, Hauger, 40, was a math and science instructor, fresh out of Drexel, who believed that the best way for kids to learn was to sit in rows, in a classroom, taking notes. After four years, he believed, they'd do best to partake in additional college academics, after which they'd get good jobs.

"I learned pretty fast that not all kids learn the same, and that college isn't for everybody," says Hauger.

He was humbled to discover that some West Philly grads who'd gone through the school's Academy of Automotive and Mechanical Engineering (the only certified auto academy offered by a Philly public school) were earning more with their certificates than he was with his fancy-pants Drexel degree.

Hoping to engage the kids who were zoning out at their desks, he started an after-school automotive club in which they could put their math and science classwork to use in the garage.

From the get-go, he urged the teens -a dozen-plus boys and girls, freshmen to seniors - to think big. For the school district's annual science fair, he had them build their own car, cobbled together using donated equipment, scavenged body parts and unique doodads that the kids created on their own.

The students won the contest. The car they created for the next year's fair took top prize, too.

Inspired, they created a car that won first place, in 2002, in the national Tour de Sol, a contest in which competitors develop alternative-fuel vehicles. That's when they first bested MIT.

In 2005, West Philly snagged the award again, cheering crazily as New York's then-Gov. George Pataki handed them the trophy in Albany.

"That was wild," says Hauger, recalling how the team blew out the car's custom axle during a practice run the day before the contest and scrambled to rebuild it. "We worked on it all night."

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Comments

Posted 06:23 AM, 11/12/2009

Beauty

This is awesome!!!!! I am happy to read some positive news! i hope these children take TOP PRIZE!

Posted 07:02 AM, 11/12/2009

josefbreuer

i second that. this is an awesome story! i work in an affluent school district -- we've got the latest and greatest technology at our disposal, and a new $20m+ facility. but in my tenure here, nothing like this -- not even a fraction of what these kids at west philly high have accomplished, has ever occured here.

Posted 07:07 AM, 11/12/2009

Magistra

This story just blew a bunch of miconceptions and stereotypes out of the water. Notice that these minority students had no problem relating to their white teacher for example. Notice that they did what was expected of them. Notice that they could never have regurgitated all that learning onto a paper and pencil test. Bravisssimi to all the wonderful students and their inspiring teachers. Ad astra - to the stars!!!

Posted 07:17 AM, 11/12/2009

phillyskyline

Congratulations, WPHS! So much for all the "West Philly is full of animals and should be barricaded from the rest of the city" comments I see on here. There are PLENTY of good, even great people in the neighborhood. And yes, some of them are young men and women.

Posted 07:18 AM, 11/12/2009

run2jazz2

This is a very good story because it focuses on young people who much of society has given up on, but those who believe in them. Despite adversity of going to "West Philly" these kids done something that many would not expect. Success comes from all areas and not because you live on the other side of the Main Line! I am proud of everyone of these and will ask that the Daily News post any information on how a person like me who was born and raised in West Philly who now live in Arizona can do ANYTHING to keep this sort of endeavor from going away. Not every kid is into drugs or violence and there are some who wish to make the world better by inventions. Great job!

Posted 07:23 AM, 11/12/2009

Magistra

(I think that Ben Afflack should play Mr. Hauger in the movie.) Oh, and has anyone noticed how many GIRLS are on the team? Another stereotype destroyed. The skills being learned and employed by students In this course transcend any standardized test ever designed. They should automatically earn scholarships to Drexel and/or any other technical college of their choice!! Well done!

Posted 07:27 AM, 11/12/2009

cygnus

GOOD WORK! I can't stand those MIT eggheads.

Posted 07:47 AM, 11/12/2009

CommonSense in Philly

This story MUST BE, HAS TO BE a misprint. I mean, after all, they are from the city and not the pristine suburbs!

Posted 07:58 AM, 11/12/2009

lstephensonii

Congrats to the team....this is a front page story...a donation? OF COURSE...

Posted 08:09 AM, 11/12/2009

Gee Money

Needless to say this is a great story and accomplishment for all involved. I will certainly make a donation. I suggest they get the word to some of the well off entertainers, sports figures and business people right in Philly. Frankly $80 - 100,000.00 is a drop in the bucket for some of them and will ultimately be a tax write off anyway. GO WEST PHILLY, YOU'RE ALREADY WINNERS