Southern Middle School students have fewer choices

(Vol. 2, No. 2 - Summer/Fall 1998)

Hard Times Down South

In a system of managed choice, students at Southern Middle School have fewer choices than most. "It's like we've been picked to be the bad school."

by Anne C. Lewis

The Little Engine That Could puffed its way up that long hill to the top because it had a will to do it, a precious cargo, and a big heart. It also had cheering readers who chanted "I think you can, I think you can" as the mechanical hero of the slender children's book strained against the odds with grit and determination.

Southern Middle School has many of the Little Engine's attributes -- except, perhaps, a cheering squad from outside that wants it to succeed. A grittier, more determined staff would be hard to find. But the hill Southern has been asked to climb is steep, and all sorts of heavy items keep getting added to the load.

Some say Southern's plight is a natural consequence of the district's "managed choice" system -- designed by a community intent upon using "tracks" to get students where they need to be. But the plan doesn't work for the 900 students at Southern, who have very few choices. "It's like we've been picked to be the bad school," observed Grinda Martin, one of two overworked counselors at Southern, as school drew to a close this past school year.

In late spring, more than the ennui from a long, weary year put teachers and counselors at this once proud neighborhood school just off Southern Parkway in a desperate mood. Lights had gone out in Donna Duvall's English/language arts classroom a half-dozen times during the year because a leaky roof shorted out the electricity.

Roslyn Dennis, the new librarian, spent much of the year tossing outdated reference books, some published in the 1940s. There were two copiers for the 40 staff members, and one was always on the blink; teachers used the red emergency line in their rooms for routine calls because they had no other means of communication.

Counselors spent precious time on hall and cafeteria duty because as many adults as possible needed to be on hand when students were out of classes. Substitute teachers were hard to find because the grapevine had alerted subs to the difficult environment at Southern.

"These are minor problems, but they build up and can ruin your whole day," said science teacher Becky Dant, who had just told her students to use masking tape sparingly for an experiment because "this is the last roll of tape for the year."

Teachers who stick it out at Southern have to be tough and absolutely committed to youngsters who need a lot of attention. Last winter, when Ginny Forman took over her English classes at mid-year, she was the sixth teacher since the school year opened. Coming from another career, she was older but new to teaching and at first believed her students' reference to her as "a mother" was a term of endearment. "I learned fast," she recalls.

Doris Mann, who has spent most of her 24 years in the classroom at Southern, has seen a persistent pattern of high teacher turnover and absenteeism, which she understands because "greenhorns can't be scared of these kids.... If they are willing to stay here, they have to be very special, they must be here for a reason."

Southern has more than its share of challenges

Why are Southern's students such a challenge? While instructional leadership at the school has been weak -- principal Skip Clemons assumes that role for himself but has to put it on a back burner because his student control skills are always sorely needed -- it is decisions made at higher levels that creates a school full of needy students. These are some of the things that Southern must deal with:

--The three feeder elementary schools are among the lowest performing in the school district -- all are in decline status under KIRIS; of the 319 incoming sixth-graders last school year, tests showed that only 13 were reading at the fifth-grade level or better.

--In order to keep a racial balance at 50-50 the attendance zone at Southern has been gerrymandered to look like five spread-out fingers; students in between the fingers attend other schools or magnet choices; even some students across the street from the school are in another school zone, but students from three housing projects are enrolled at Southern.

--Gradually, the district has placed more and more special needs students at the school; last year there were five behaviorally disturbed (BD) units and 14 special education units. This year there are eight of each. Cathy Ronay, who supported the school during 1997-98 as part of the state's Distinguished Educator program, observed with disgust that the school had "become a special education magnet by default." One principal at another JCPS middle school agreed: "It's a disgrace. It's a BD magnet school."

--KIRIS scores of the enormous number of students with disabilities count as part of Southern's record, as do the scores and absenteeism of last year's eighth-graders who failed and were sent to an alternative school. Students expelled from magnet programs at other schools in the area for behavior reasons get sent back to Southern.

--Parents feel disempowered. The PTA is minimally active, and teachers observe that parents believe no one is willing to listen to them. "If a parent from a better school calls the district about a problem, something gets done," says Dant, but Southern's parents are often not as articulate and are very angry, "so they are not listened to." Still, they try to be involved. The Youth Services Center, for example, organizes monthly luncheon programs for students who have been honored, and several dozen parents or grandparents usually attend. "We have parents who really care," says Dant, mentioning their attempts to raise extra funds for the school, "but our parents can't go around offices like a father at Ballard, for example, and ask for money."

District policies that amass so many students with extreme problems in one school can't help but make teaching and learning difficult. Teachers throughout the building keep talking about the "good kids," those who want to learn, but there aren't enough of them. Even these wind up fighting because "they are terrified of other kids. It's a matter of survival for them," says Martin. One-third of the students last school year were absent more than 20 days. Teachers constantly try to counteract student attitudes that foster "bragging about doing badly," an atmosphere that forces students who want to learn to hide their abilities.

Teachers would settle for 30 percent who want to learn

A special education teacher until the 1997-98 school year, when she was selected to be the school's instructional specialist, Mann is convinced that the district "has closed its eyes on these kids because people don't want to be accountable." The demographics need to change so that at least 50 percent of the students "have a positive attitude toward learning," she says. Martin would settle for only 30 percent, commenting that Southern's students "are the ones left over after the magnets and other programs have creamed off everyone else."

Southern's plight underscores a recent finding by Dr. Vernon Polite, an outside consultant and expert on principal leadership, who has shadowed principals in a number of JCPS middle schools. "There are significant discrepancies in resources across the schools," he wrote in a report to the district. "Much of this seems to depend upon the individual principal's ability to draw resources to the school and the resources in the surrounding community."

Southern is listed as a technology careers option in the district's application booklet, but Southern teachers say the option is a farce. It's only because the school has a computer lab, the teachers explain. The school tried to organize a law enforcement career option program, but couldn't pull it off. It has made connections with the nearby Louisville Zoo -- sixth graders spent a week at the zoo this past spring, enjoying hands-on science learning and behaving very well, according to Mann. Teacher Beverly Silletto took 80 students on a field trip to Berea College, which was an "eye-opener for them because most had never even thought about going to college."

Clemons and 16 of this staff attended training in Newport Beach, Va., this summer to begin an Advancement by Individual Determination (AVID) program at Southern. Three teachers will implement the program this fall. They have selected 30 promising but underachieving students at each grade level for a special class to teach them study skills, career options and what they need to prepare them for college. Most Southern students attend nearby Iroquois High School; a few try for more selective schools but recently none have been accepted.

"Once kids are here, you're not going to be accepted into the best high schools," commented Donna Dieckman, who moved from teacher to reading specialist at Southern last school year. The AVID program is being sponsored at Southern by the state education department, not the district, in order to have a middle-school model (AVID, developed in California, usually focuses on high school students). The prospect has cheered the teachers and motivated other teachers to seek the training, but AVID will reach only 10 percent of the student body.

During her tenure at Southern, Distinguished Educator Ronay pushed several important changes at the school, teachers say. Ronay argued that the use of 11 teacher aides was expensive and ineffective. She helped deploy the funds into the positions of instructional coordinator and reading specialist; eliminating the teacher aide positions. She also worked with the teachers to align instruction and curriculum with state standards and become more effective at examining student papers to identify problems in teaching and learning. Ronay also pushed for consistent policies on discipline, parent involvement and professional development.

Ronay also helped school personnel learn to play games that other schools, less burdened with daily crises, are able to figure out. For example, Southern's portfolio scores were the lowest in the state in 1997, when huge teacher turnover left Clemons with all new teachers for seventh-grade English language arts, none of whom had experience with portfolios. That mistake won't be repeated. Also, with more than 200 students under Individual Education Plans, the school could have used proctors and scribes on a one-on-one basis for the 1997 KIRIS testing, but didn't have any. During last spring's KIRIS testing, Ronay and teachers organized volunteers from churches and neighborhood groups to help on KIRIS day.

Southern's odds may be improving

There are other signs that the odds are improving for teachers who continue to stick it out at Southern. Before, professional development training encouraged the teachers to try improvements, but "there was no followup and not enough professional development days to create good discussions among us about how to turn things around," admitted vice principal Mary Kik. That situation has begun to change in the last year, as the district has strengthened its commitment to standards-based teaching and created more staff development time and more follow-up support focused on each school's particular needs.

This year, as part of its new grant commitments to the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, the district has promised to use Clark grant funds to give top priority to instructional improvements at Southern and four other "focus" middle schools (Western, Frost, Farnsley, and Conway). Melody Raymond, a former teacher at Southern who now serves as the district's "Clark Fellow" for language arts, will give extra time to the school this year.

And district leaders say Southern will also receive a higher priority from non-Clark staff. Nancy Hottman, former principal at Newburg Middle School, will spend half her time this year as a "Distinguished Leader" at the school -- a position similar to the state-sponsored "Distinguished Educator" but paid for by the district.

Late last spring, Southern began to hold "truancy court," modeled on a successful experiment at Meyzeek Middle School, where a family judge holds court in the school auditorium once a week. Meyzeek's absentee rate has dropped dramatically as a result, and Southern hopes to garner similar results.

Despite all of its problems, some of Southern's teachers can be counted among the most committed in the district. They draw their energy and determination from students "left out of a private school system that's been created within the public one," as Mann sees it. Her eyes cloud with tears when talking about a student she began mentoring personally and how she tried to get him into a good high school program but failed. She worries about what will happen to him.

Forman, who found at Southern "kids who literally don't know how to laugh," tells of a student who stared at her in amazement when he received a perfect score on a pop quiz. "I ain't never made a 100 on anything before," he said, and then started crying.

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