Philadelphia senior hits attendance milestone

No missed days for a fever or a post-prom party. No absences for a bad cold or a queasy stomach, a family event or a broken-down car.

For 13 years - from kindergarten through today, as he finishes up his senior year at Parkway West High School - Amir Blount-Hart has had perfect attendance.

Chalk it up to a strong constitution and no serious illnesses, says Amir, 17. But also, factor in a young man determined to stand apart, to succeed, to resist the lure of the streets. And consider his mother, the kind of woman who sets curfews, calls teachers, knows where her children are every minute.

"I don't like to follow other people," Amir said. "I love that word - different."

The same goes for Wendy Blount, Amir's mom, who deflected the occasional heavy sighs and eye-rolls when she made her oldest go to class on a tough day or marched down to the basketball court to bring him home when he was five minutes past curfew.

"It snows five inches, and I'm saying, 'Come on, put on those boots, you're going to school,' " Blount said. "I told him, 'When you get to the next level, you'll understand why I did what I did.' "

Blount, who lives with Amir and her two younger children in their neat Overbrook rowhome, knows a thing or two about perfect attendance. She graduated from West Philadelphia High having never missed a day of school. Her seventh grader, Khalir, and preschooler, Monae, are also on track for perfection.

Amir takes his big-brother role seriously, clucking over Monae, 4, a precocious girl eager to say she goes to school every day, too.

"When you're older, you've got to show that you're a leader," Amir said, accepting a kiss from the little girl.

Slender and handsome, with short braids and a stud in each ear, Amir is a solid basketball player and a standout dancer. He earns mostly A's and B's - not the top student in his class, but a good one. He's headed to Penn State's Brandywine campus as a business major in the fall.

In his neighborhood, at Parkway West, there were certainly obstacles, he said.

"There's fights that go down and people stepping on you," he said. "It's hard to walk away from a fight, but I tried to make friends with people, and I don't start fights."

Gloria Pelzer, principal of Parkway West, a small magnet school at 49th and Chestnut, said she loved having Amir as a student.

"He's very outgoing, very friendly," Pelzer said. "I think the other students look up to him because of his accomplishment. They realize it's a great thing."

While Amir is not the first student she's known with a 13-year streak of perfect attendance, "it's very rare," Pelzer said. "It happens, but it's few and far between."

Sometimes, Amir said, it was tough to be the goody two-shoes, but conduct matters, and suspensions come with three mandatory missed days.

"I'm a popular guy," Amir said. "My friends never say, 'Dang, you're a geek for doing that.' "

Sometimes, he said, forcing himself out of bed when he felt badly or when his mom's car broke down on the coldest day of the year, it seemed impossible to get to school.

"There were times I didn't want to go," he said. "But you have to make yourself."

And sometimes, he had to get creative, checking in and leaving by midday when he felt really poorly, or persuading his friends to ditch senior-cut day for a school-sanctioned trip instead.

The big picture is everything to Amir and to Wendy, 43, a woman with a no-nonsense ponytail and a broad smile, herself the child of a single mother who demanded much of her daughter.

Lorraine Blount was 38, a West Philadelphia homemaker when her husband died, leaving five children, the youngest of whom, Wendy, was 4. Times were tough, "but it was vital to her that we all got our diplomas, by any means."

Wendy began her college career at Temple but had to leave because money was tight. She transferred to community college, where she earned a degree before taking a year off with plans to return for her bachelor's degree.

Life intruded. She got pregnant with Amir and never went back to school. She'll finish someday, she said, but for now, her kids and her work as a pre-foreclosure specialist at Wachovia Bank keep her busy.

That Wendy and Amir's father, who lives nearby, never finished their bachelor's degrees motivates their son, she said.

"He wants to fulfill what we couldn't complete," Wendy said. "All we can do is make sure he gets there, no matter what."

Of course, Wendy worried about Amir along the way. She was always the strict mother, the one who insisted he be back in the house by dark when his friends didn't have to be home until 10 p.m.

"I had my doubts, but I am so proud of him," she said, motioning to a stack of awards Amir amassed over the years.

For a while, he hung out with "the baddest of the bad," Amir admits, but now that's all over.

"The friends I hang around are people that are going somewhere," he said.

That doesn't mean they let him off the hook when his mom made a surprise visit to class if his grades were slipping.

"They say, 'Yeah, I remember when Amir's mom came up to school,' " he said, laughing.

Before heading to Penn State's Delaware County campus, Amir will spend the summer working for a city program that's had him cleaning up neighborhoods and toiling in the mayor's office.

"I try to be a good worker," Amir said. "I do what I have to do, and I don't play around."

Having hit one attendance milestone, Amir doesn't plan on stopping now.

"I don't want to miss any days of college," Amir said, "and I don't want to miss any days of work."