A School Reorganization Story That Will Pull At Your Heartstrings--And Give You Hope About Peoples' Strengths
Ohanian Comment: This article isn't about Schwarzenegger; it's about the strength of people who work in schools--from the principal to the cafeteria manager. No one is better than Michael Winerip at getting to the heart of matter--and revealing it in a telling quote. He does it once again. For me, that telling quote comes out of the mouth of the cafeteria manager, which reveals a lot about the principal as well as the manager.
LOS ANGELES
It made a wonderfully pithy sound bite for the recall election. "I guarantee I will not raise your taxes," Arnold Schwarzenegger said. "And I guarantee I will not cut education."
Given a record state deficit this past year, with more of the same forecast, educators here are asking, Is this really possible?
"It will be a miracle if we don't have a new round of budget cuts," said Sylvia Rousseau, a Los Angeles school superintendent in charge of District I, which includes 54,000 of the city's poorest children. "The scary part is waiting to see what's really going to happen."
For two years Dr. Rousseau's job has been to turn around schools like Locke High in Watts, and while there are signs this is beginning, it will be a long, hard slog that will not be over anytime soon. After Proposition 13 was passed in 1978, capping taxes, California's spending on public education plummeted and never recovered. A new study by the Public Policy Institute of California says that even with relatively high teacher salaries, California spends "9 percent less per student than schools in the rest of the U.S."
How bad did things get? In 2000, the American Civil Liberties Union sued over conditions at dozens of the state's most neglected schools (Williams v. California) and began taking testimony from poor children. Alfredo Vargas testified that as a Locke ninth grader last year, he had no algebra book two months into the term, a different math substitute practically every week and a folding chair, but no desk. "If I would've had a book in class for the first couple of months of school," he said. "I think I might have learned more algebra."
"We don't have homework in English," he said, "and I think part of the reason is because we don't have books to take home."
Sandy Gonzales testified that her class had to read the novel "Always Running," but there were no books, so the English teacher copied a chapter a week for students to take home. Sandy, a tenth grader when she testified in May, explained that she wanted to go to college and had passed Algebra I but could not take Algebra II because classes were filled, with nearly 40 to a room.
In his testimony two years ago, Zeus Cubias, a Locke math teacher, described a school that had not been fully staffed for years, that relied on poorly trained substitutes and that assigned him an upper-level class after the school year had begun, with no curriculum or materials. "I spent much of my time during the first few weeks of school searching through closets and different parts of the school to find books," he testified.
To remake Locke, the first thing Dr. Rousseau did was hire a new principal, Gail Garrett, who had taught algebra there for 18 years before leaving to become an administrator. This one act provided a major morale boost, winning over even skeptics like Mr. Cubias.
"Gail's there at 5:30 a.m.," Mr. Cubias said. "Many nights her car's still there at 11. I live in the neighborhood and when I go by Saturday, Gail's car's there."
Dr. Garrett's first priority was hiring teachers: "We worked every job fair. We got special approval from the district to sign teachers to contracts as early as April."
Locke didn't have great working conditions, but in a bad economy it was guaranteeing jobs months ahead of other schools. Dr. Rousseau set up a program with U.C.L.A. to attract new graduates, first as interns, then as certified teachers. Nearly 50 new teachers were hired, and for the first time in memory, Locke had a full staff of 120 — by early July.
Dr. Garrett reorganized the school. Dropouts are a big problem, with a freshman class of 1,200 dwindling to 250 by senior year. The largest number of students are lost between ninth and tenth grades, so a ninth-grade school within Locke was created, with four teams of teachers, each responsible for 300 ninth graders, giving adults and children a better chance to know one another. The rest of the school was broken into smaller academies, with focuses like performing arts and science.
The principal stretched the staff, asking her cafeteria manager, Angel Fisher, to sponsor the cheerleaders, and her custodian, Lonnie Graham, to be an adviser to students.
"It was nice to be thought of," Ms. Fisher said. "I never had this opportunity in no school before."
The school added the AVID program, intended to encourage middle-level students to attend college. Students learn study skills, get tutoring and make field trips to colleges.
This fall, for the basic algebra course required by the state, there were two new sets of textbooks, one for school and one for home, along with workbooks and a CD with drills.
Hope can be catching. Chad Soleo, an English teacher, and several colleagues who were sick of sending novels home a chapter at a time raised $11,000 on their own to buy 17 sets of novels for tenth graders.
Dr. Rousseau believes that these changes have contributed to recent improvements in test scores, but she also knows how fragile those gains are, how far behind her 54 District I schools remain and how thinly stretched Locke is.
While there are now plenty of books for state-mandated algebra, two months into the year there are no books for the A.P. statistics course. Dr. Garrett's mantra, which she repeats daily over the loudspeaker, is "Welcome to Locke High School, home of the successful Saints, where each and every one of our students is expected to go to college." Yet, there is only enough staff to offer the AVID program to 200 of 3,000 students.
Thinly stretched? Over half the teachers have less than two years' experience, and Dr. Garrett does not have enough senior staff members to observe and mentor them. Last year, while the state was auditing Locke, the school had five assistant principals; this year it has three. Worst of all, Dr. Garrett says, is class size — 37 in most cases. She has mobilized the cafeteria manager and head custodian and still has far too few adults.
And so even if the governor-elect lives up to the sound bite and manages to maintain the status quo, the people of Locke still might wonder, where does that leave them?
— Michael Winerip
A Test for Schwarzenegger: Adding Muscle to Bare Bones
New York Times
2003-11-05
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/05/politics/05EDUC.html
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
