A Cleveland Magazine reporter has been following three Cleveland Public School students for 18 months to answer the question: What’s it like growing up in one of the country’s poorest cities?

It’s not a pretty picture, at least according to these three accounts.

There’s Ruben, a West Side Puerto Rican with a learning disability that recently knocked up his girlfriend.

There’s Angela, who spends are her time exhausted from her night job at Taco Bell, where she works to help support her ailing mother and younger sister.

And Gerald, a respectful and promising student, who aspires to be a rapper and go to college.

“People who live in the suburbs, they work hard to be in the suburbs, and they want to make sure their kids have a good life,” he says. “It’s not like there’s a sign on the suburbs that says you can’t move there. So I can’t knock them.”

Gerald is my favorite

All of them are struggling to graduate from Lincoln West High School. Some make it, some don’t.

This is a great piece of journalism about an important issue it’s all too easy to forget about.

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