An alternative high school program in the Liverpool School District is a haven for the students who attend it, but also apparently a target for critics in a difficult budget climate. Our Kat De Maria takes us inside the FOCUS program and reports on its progress and uncertain future.

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LIVERPOOL, N.Y. -- The closing of Liverpool's Wetzel Road Elementary meant the opening of an opportunity for students like Sam Brazill and Lamar Williams.

"I had a lot of problems last year at my old school with homework," Williams said.

"Liverpool middle was too hard, BOCES was too easy. I was finally going to go to the high school and I wasn't that excited for it," Brazill said.

The timing was perfect for Brazill and Williams as they applied and were accepted to the new FOCUS program, an alternative setting for ninth and tenth graders in the former Wetzel building.

"It's really a venue or program designed around smaller learning community, project-based learning, interdisciplinary approach to learning: How can we make the information we want kids to learn relevant," said FOCUS program principal Mark Potter.

In English Friday, students were acting out the courtroom scene of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Just five months into the program, students, like Williams, are enjoying learning.

"Social studies, English, science. I really don't like math like that," Williams said.

Okay...most learning. FOCUS currently has 44 students, five-and-a-half teachers and four support staff members. Liverpool's superintendent says the district is spending about 15 percent more per student in the program than in the high school, which he says has made it a target for critics.

"As the program grows, some of the fixed costs of principals and social workers and secretaries and so forth will stay static, and as the population grows, it'll be more cost-effective," said Superintendent Richard Johns.

The FOCUS program originally was part of a larger plan to break Liverpool High School into academies. But a couple of years of difficult budgets led the superintendent to abandon that plan and may even be threatening the future of FOCUS.

"I don't like to give up FOCUS, I don't like to give up foreign language, I don't like to give up fine arts, I don't like to give up athletics. But the reality is we have to put together a budget," Johns said.

For now, FOCUS is in the budget. But students and staff say they're aware it might not be for long.

"Parents who have kids in this program are very supportive of it, wholeheartedly. But we understand that we have parents of kids in other buildings who see this as a program that certainly doesn't have the same financial support," Potter said.

Sam Brazill may not have the rhetorical expertise of Atticus Finch yet. But he says he's defending his school, and his and his classmates' opportunity, as best he can.

"This is the best school I've been to all my life. It's just perfect," Brazill said.

Liverpool's superintendent will present his budget February 27th.