By Jill Colvin
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
EAST HARLEM — Forget that old-fashioned alarm clock. The city has a new trick for getting kids out of bed and into school, and a host of sports icons and music stars have teamed up to help.
Beginning later this month, 6,500 students at 25 of the city's lowest-attendance schools will begin receiving automated wake-up calls from celebrities including basketball star Magic Johnson, Mets shortstop Jose Reyes and music stars Big Boi and Trey Songz.
"Mo-rning! It's me-eee!” NBA champ Magic Johnson hollers in a grating mothers' tone in one of the messages unveiled Thursday. "I'm calling the shots today. Get up out of bed, into school," he urges kids.
The new campaign is part of a larger effort to reduce absentee rates across the city, where about one-fifth of students miss a month or more of school a year, jeopardizing their educations and their futures, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.
The city plans to roll out the program in the spring to about 250,000 chronically absent students city-wide, which should serve as "a wake-up call" for students and parents that something is wrong, Bloomberg said.
Students whose attendance improves will also receive calls congratulating them for showing up.
"Imagine being a young girl and how excited they'll be when they hear Trey Songz, say, 'Get up, it's school time!'...I think it's a really smart idea," said Terrence J. from BET's show "106 and Park," one of a handful of celebrities who joined the mayor and Schools Chancellor Cathie Black at East Harlem's Isaac Newton Middle School.
Isaac Newton school is one of two Manhattan schools included in a program launched last summer to combat high truancy rates. Attendance jumped nearly 40 percent at the school during the fall semester versus the previous school year, according to new city numbers.
But at other schools, results have been mixed. While absenteeism dropped by 24 percent in the ten targeted elementary schools and nearly 16 percent in eight middle schools, high school absences actually rose from 44 percent to 47 percent at targeted schools — a jump of 7 percent.
"We knew at the outset high schools would be the biggest problem," Bloomberg said.
Isaac Newton eighth-grader Alberto Aquino, 13, who lives in East Harlem, explained that getting to school can be tough, especially when it's cold outside.
"You're under the sheets. It's warm," he said, adding that his mom usually has to make several attempts to wake him up.
While he thought the idea of getting a call from a sports or music star would be cool, he wasn't so sure about hearing from Bloomberg, who has also recorded a version of the call.
"That would be weird," he said.
