Scorned school turns itself around
Lombard's youngsters pushing their pencils
Building a Power Base for Better Education
Academy's First Graduates Step from Poverty to
Success
http://www.middleweb.com/MGNEWS1/aaMGNewsWatch.html#anchor5369464
12-23-01
Baltimore Sun
Scorned school turns itself around
Staff, students revive Annapolis Middle
By Stephen Kiehl
Sun Staff
The back yards in Annapolis' Hunt Meadow neighborhood give way to forests
of oak and pine. Cutout Santas guard manicured lawns, and stray basketballs
nest in piles of brown leaves.
Completing the Norman Rockwell tableau is a brick schoolhouse, Annapolis
Middle, that's so close the children can walk to it.
But almost no one does.
Annapolis Middle School is the emptiest in the Baltimore area. The huge
building can hold 1,736 children. This year, 531 go there. In a region where
many schools are well over capacity, Annapolis Middle is barely 31 percent
full.
Many families left the school long ago. They heard stories of girls carrying
weapons for protection, of hallway fights and of four public housing projects
feeding into the school.
"This being an upper-middle-class neighborhood, people can afford to
make other choices, and they do," said Margie Kling, whose two daughters
attend private St. Mary's School.
But instead of falling into the hopeless downward spiral of so many troubled
schools, Annapolis Middle is rebounding.
Test scores and enrollment are inching upward. Children are taking advanced
classes and staging Shakespearean plays. Motivated teachers take students
to Washington Wizards games as a reward for good work.
A crusading principal has brought energy and hope to a place that once had
neither. And, cautiously, private school families are giving Annapolis Middle
another look.
"People used to say that unless you had your own knife, you better
not go there," said Marlies Empey, who transferred her son, Owen, from
the $9,100-a-year St. Anne's Day School to Annapolis Middle this year. "But
in the last few years I've heard better and better things. I think the tide
is turning."
Once overcrowded
When Annapolis Middle School opened in 1964 on the southern tip of the city,
near the South River, it drew children from all over Anne Arundel County.
By 1976, the school had 2,276 children and was so crowded it ran on split
shifts, some students arriving before dawn, others leaving after dark.
Some who went to the school in its early days recall tension between children
from different neighborhoods and between blacks and whites.
"I had a friend in elementary school who was black, and at junior high
we didn't hang around together because of pressure from our friends,"
said Susie Collins, 47, who attended the school in the late 1960s.
The school population declined as word of the tensions spread and as public
and private schools opened. By 1988, enrollment had fallen to 634 children.
In 1998, when a student was arrested for making bomb threats against the
school, 508 attended Annapolis Middle.
Last year, the school's enrollment bottomed out at 486.
"When I first came here," said Reginald Farrare, who has been
principal for five years, "some people told me they were afraid to
send their children to Annapolis Middle School."
Lowest enrollment
Parents complained two years ago when schools Superintendent Carol S. Parham
proposed moving about 275 children from Mayo Elementary to Annapolis Middle
while a new Mayo school was built. Parham received a death threat over the
plan, though Mayo parents said they had nothing to do with it. In the end,
the children were not moved.
At 31 percent of its capacity, Annapolis Middle is the least-populated school
in the area that includes Baltimore and the city's surrounding counties.
The least-populated schools in Baltimore City are Federal Hill Elementary
and the Dr. Roland N. Patterson Senior Academy - both at 37 percent capacity.
In the crowded Howard County school system, the least-populated school is
Ellicott Mills Middle, at 71 percent capacity. Dundalk Middle is the least
populated Baltimore County school, with 55 percent of its seats filled.
But many suburban schools are well beyond their capacity. At some schools,
students must eat lunch before 10 a.m. and attend class in parking lot trailers.
The most crowded schools in the region are Howard County's Pointers Run
Elementary (51 percent over capacity), Baltimore County's Johnnycake Elementary
(45 percent over capacity) and Anne Arundel's Davidsonville Elementary (42
percent over capacity).
The families that stuck with Annapolis Middle said their neighbors who favored
private schools made them wonder whether Annapolis would best serve their
children - leading many newcomers to give up on the school before even giving
it a chance.
"They make you feel like you made the wrong decision," said Wrenn
Gooding, who has a daughter who graduated from Annapolis Middle last year
and another in sixth grade now. "But you have a better community if
everyone goes to school together.
"If you don't come into a school and see how it works, it's not fair
to criticize it," she added. "I've been in there, and my kids
are getting a good education."
Annapolis Middle occupies a 216,000-square-foot, two-story building on Spa
Road, a couple of miles south of downtown's cobblestone streets. The school's
40-acre campus borders several middle-class neighborhoods, but some of the
city's roughest housing projects are nearby, too.
That scares some parents.
"They think their kids are going to get beaten up because sometimes
kids do act more aggressively," said Anne Zolkower, whose daughter
Sarah is in seventh grade at Annapolis. "But there haven't been any
times when I've been worried about her safety."
Kling, the St. Mary's parent, went to Catholic schools and wanted the same
for her children. Many St. Mary's families, she said, aren't so much trying
to escape Annapolis Middle as they are looking for a religious education
for their children.
"What I do hear from parents is they really believe in getting the
values education, the morals and strict discipline," said Kling, who
teaches at St. Mary's. "I don't hear that Annapolis Middle has a bad
reputation - it's just parents are prioritizing what's important to them."
But it doesn't come cheaply or easily. Private school tuition ranges from
$3,900 for in-parish families at St. Mary's to $14,310 at the Severn School
in Severna Park. Parents must also organize carpools and ferry their children
up to a half-hour to get to classes and sports.
Ann Ruppel, who lives in Hunt Meadow, sends one daughter to Indian Creek
in Crownsville and one to the Key School in Annapolis. The long commutes
and high tuitions are a bother, she said, but the schools are worth it.
"I felt the environment would be more conducive to learning,"
she said. "Because the public school draws from such a diverse population,
there are issues of discipline."
But Steven Cohen, who lives next door to the Ruppels, said he rarely sees
fights in school.
"This school's pretty cool," said Steven, a seventh-grader. He's
in student government, and he helps take student polls and plan dances.
"I like going there. I like gym class, and I like algebra. It's pretty
hard, but I can understand it."
His mother, JoAnn Cohen, said she knows of just five other children in their
400-home Hunt Meadow neighborhood who go to Annapolis Middle. But she's
committed to the school.
She said the math and language instruction her son is getting will give
him a jump-start on high school. Besides algebra, he's taking Spanish and
other advanced classes.
"There's an effort by parents to talk about the school, to convince
others to give it a try," Cohen said. "It's really a community
effort."
Lessons from the coach
When parents and teachers talk about the resurgence of Annapolis Middle,
they start with Farrare, the principal. He took the helm at Annapolis in
1996 after spending the first 23 years of his career in other Anne Arundel
middle schools.
He applied the lessons he learned as a track coach at Marley Junior High
School to his job at Annapolis. At Marley, he made winners out of a ragtag
bunch of kids who didn't know track from trigonometry. His teams went on
to win four consecutive county track championships.
"But we didn't become champions overnight," he said. "It
took some time. I'm not sure what that ultimate feeling would be here -
for all the kids to graduate or to blow away the MSPAP [tests]. That can
never happen, but it doesn't stop you from having that goal in mind."
One of Farrare's first priorities as principal was to clean up the school,
to make it more welcoming by tacking pictures and posters to the walls ("READ!"
Oprah Winfrey commands) and giving each hallway a name like Rigorous Road,
Learning Lane or Pride Parkway.
Then he drew the community into the school and marketed it to potential
teachers and parents in an activist style unusual to public schools. He
invited the YWCA and others to meet in his classrooms. He persuaded churches
to help with tutoring and mentoring. He sits on the advisory board of Mount
Moriah AME Church.
He brought in professors from nearby St. John's College as guest teachers
and asked classically trained actors to help stage Shakespearean plays (last
year they did A Midsummer Night's Dream). He started a Junior National Honor
Society chapter and involved children in the National Spelling Bee and National
Geography Bee.
When parents call him to ask about the school, he invites them to spend
a day in his classrooms, wander the halls, and talk with teachers and students.
The well-behaved children often surprise the parents, he said.
"You see, they're not killing each other," Farrare joked, patrolling
the cafeteria one morning. "They're typical kids eating their lunch."
Pulling up the test scores
The school is 57 percent black, 37 percent white, and the rest Asian and
Hispanic. Half of the children receive a free or reduced-price school lunch.
The school's test scores are the lowest of Anne Arundel's 19 middle schools.
But they're rising.
On last year's Maryland School Performance Assessment Program test, 32.9
percent of Annapolis students scored satisfactory or better, compared with
the county average of 47.5 percent. Still, that's an increase over the previous
two years.
The school doesn't use one of its three wings. But it's not empty. Some
of the classrooms are used as offices for school district employees. Others
are leased to private groups, and a few are used for after-school programs.
The YWCA runs a program for at-risk children called the Star Academy. There's
also space for the federal Gear-Up program, which provides after-school
tutoring, mentoring, field trips and college preparation to any child who
asks for them.
Annapolis Middle will soon be sharing a $1 million state grant with the
other 11 Annapolis public schools. State Del. Michael E. Busch, an Annapolis
Democrat, pushed for the money to help bring the city's schools onto even
footing with their private counterparts.
"We want the public and private schools to be competitive," said
Busch, whose daughter goes to the public West Annapolis Elementary. "We
don't want two tiers. We want equitable choices.
"The schools are a reflection of the community. Are you going to have
private schools that are predominantly white and public schools that are
predominantly minority? You'll divide the community."
Commitment of parents
Farrare wants to bring it together, and one key to that is boosting the
school's Parent-Teacher-Student Organization, an active group of parents
who on their own raise about $5,000 a year and divvy it up for school improvements.
At a recent meeting, they took a few votes:
Would they give an Annapolis artist $200 to buy paint and help the children
fill the hallways with murals? Absolutely.
How about $400 to pay a slam poet to come to the school once a week for
two months to work with the children? Sure.
And $50 for teacher Travia Fuller to start a small library in her classroom?
Make it $100.
Fuller teaches the school's Soar to Success program, designed for students
who are years behind their grade level in reading. Fuller's classes are
small, just four to seven students, and effective. In three months of the
program, some students jump two grade levels in their reading abilities.
The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Fuller and another teacher, Katie Brophy,
took four students to a Washington Wizards game as a reward for an essay
contest. The teachers paid for the tickets. At the game, the kids got to
high-five the Wizards as they ran out of the tunnel onto the court.
In their essays, the students were asked to answer the question: "What's
a role model?" One of the winners, Treva Simpson, wrote about her math
teacher, Kathie Strong.
"She's not a famous person," Treva wrote. "She's an honest,
hardworking person. She is devoted to teaching, even if math is a hard subject
for you to understand, like it is for me. ... To me, she's a role model
with no strings attached."
Strong teaches across the hallway, otherwise known as Success Street, from
Fuller. She cried when she read the essay.
"That's the reason I do what I do," said Strong, an 11-year veteran
of Annapolis Middle. "I feel like I make a difference here."
'Oh, you poor woman'
Yet, Strong said, some people still don't get it. She said the school key
chain she wears around her neck sometimes draws unfavorable attention outside
of school.
"When I go to the Giant, people still say, 'You work at Annapolis Middle?
Oh, you poor woman,'" Strong said. Those people, she said, are living
in a different era.
In the past few years, at least seven families have moved their children
out of private schools and into Annapolis Middle, Farrare said.
And the number of families moving their children from public elementary
schools to private middle schools is dwindling, parents and teachers said.
"The word is out about Annapolis Middle," said Mary Adams, president
of the Parent-Teacher-Student Organization. "Even the parents who can
afford a private school are choosing Annapolis. They sense that maybe they're
missing out on a great opportunity for their kids."
===============================================
December 20, 2001
Baltimore Sun
Lombard's youngsters pushing their pencils
Reforms: The school system hopes an intensive focus on writing and literacy
at Lombard Middle and nine other schools will boost test scores and help
the children.
SUN STAFF
Erika Niedowski
Twelve year-old Shannon Carter writes a lot more this year at Baltimore's
Lombard Middle School: paragraphs on what she does when she gets stressed,
drills on how she feels about school uniforms, essays on whether she'd like
to move to another country.
Many of the assignments are from her seventh-grade language arts teacher,
the self-described "Wicked Witch of Lombard Middle" who has been
working the kids "until their fingers fall off." "If I had
to immigrant to another country I would be sad because I would miss all
of my friend, my family, my naboris, my teachers exspelly my favorite teacher
Ms. Hall, and most of all lombard Middle School," Shannon wrote in
her journal in September. "I would be very mad because I wouldn't want
to were different clothing and I'm fine wat I'm wereing."
Shannon gets tired of writing, but she knows the practice should help her
get better at it. Whether she succeeds will largely depend on whether the
East Baltimore school improves.
Achievement First, a new reform program emphasizing reading and writing
in all subjects, is designed to help Lombard improve so much that it would
be removed from the state's list of failing schools within three years.
Last year, 2.3 percent of eighth-graders at Lombard performed satisfactorily
on the state's reading exam, while 4 percent met the standard in math.
Lombard's shortcomings are shared by most of the city's two dozen middle
schools, which for years have been leaving children woefully unprepared
for high school - and life beyond. Even the highest performing, most motivated
kids, such as Shannon, are counting on comprehensive middle school reform
promised last spring by schools Chief Executive Officer Carmen V. Russo.
Shannon consistently shows up for class, works hard and receives support
at home, none of which is a given among the city's public school children.
But with less than two years until high school - where she likely will have
to pass tough new assessment exams in English, algebra and biology to graduate
- Shannon struggles with some of the basics of reading, writing and math.
That is why Arnetta Hall, the "wicked witch" instructor, is so
important.
Hall is different from the language arts teacher who taught Shannon in sixth
grade at Lombard.
"The teacher that we had last year, she didn't have no control over
the kids, and they was bad," Shannon says.
Hall will interrupt a class 20 times if she has to - and often she does
- to address kids who misbehave. She doesn't hesitate to give zeroes for
incomplete work, and she'll send children to the office if they deserve
to go.
No reform program will be as successful as it could be, Hall says, until
behavior is under control.
"Sometimes I can't pay attention because of the kids talking and stuff,"
Shannon says. "I can't hear the teacher."
At first, Shannon was skeptical of Hall. Shannon's grandmother protested
when Hall instructed everyone in the class to write 750 words about following
rules after some of them misbehaved when a substitute teacher led the class.
"She did not write that essay," says Bessie Johnson, 61. "Seven
hundred fifty words is just too much. She ain't in college."
The emphasis on writing is a fundamental part of Achievement First, which
is being used at Lombard and nine elementary and middle schools in the newly
created "CEO's district." The schools are given extra money, in
part for additional staff members and professional development. In return,
they are expected to raise test scores on an ambitious timetable.
One of those tests is the Maryland Functional writing exam, which is administered
over two days. Russo, the schools' chief, has pledged to bring the percentage
of Lombard seventh-graders who pass it from 0 to 30 this school year. Shannon's
class spends several weeks preparing, responding to sample writing "prompts"
that are similar to those on the real exam. One assignment is a letter to
the editor of the school newspaper about an improvement that should be made
at Lombard.
As the first step, the children must write in their academic journals -
a staple of Achievement First - 10 things they would like to see improved.
Shannon thinks of seven, including "better lunch," "better
students that will act their age" and "no uniforms" - she's
tired of wearing white and khaki.
"My problem that I'm haveing with the cafeteria food is that it is
nasty," she writes in a draft of the letter. "The problem that
I'm haveing interfere with learning because the students and me can get
a bad headack because of the fact that we didn't eat anything at lunch."
The day before the assignment is due, Hall works individually with children
who are having trouble. By a show of hands, about half the class of 33 wants
help.
Hall helps five kids in the 75-minute period - mainly because she has to
stop to scold someone for talking, tell children to write their names on
the board as a warning, and send others to the office after their warnings
have run out.
Those who still need help are urged by Hall to stay after school for "coach"
class.
"This is your life. Your future. Invest in it," she tells them.
"If I can stay, so can you."
Hall says Shannon isn't where she should be academically, but no one is
in Section 7-09 - one of the strongest seventh-grade sections.
"Compared to the others, she does really well," says Hall, 28,
who was a long-term substitute at another city school last year and worked
in public relations before that. She believes Lombard's focus on literacy
will prepare Shannon for high school.
"We have what it takes to get her ready," Hall says.
A tall, thin girl who wears K-Swiss sneakers and a black leather jacket,
Shannon lives in a rowhouse on East Lanvale Street, about two miles from
school. Her grandmother, a Baltimore native who takes dance and computer
classes, has raised Shannon since she was 2, when her drug-addicted mother
couldn't cope anymore.
"Granny" is involved in everything Shannon does. The former nurse's
aide and beautician takes Shannon to school, picks her up, and sits with
her at the dining room table while she does her homework.
"I think if she sees that I'm involved, it'll make her feel better
about coming to school and doing what she has to do," says Johnson,
who was expelled from high school at 16 and never went back.
Shannon took years of dance classes, including jazz, ballet and tap, until
she burned out a few years ago. Now she spends two afternoons a week at
majorettes practice for the Charm City Challengers marching band. In the
city's annual Thanksgiving parade last month, Johnson carried the Challengers'
banner down Pratt Street as Shannon twirled her baton.
"Everything positive she wants to do, I try my best to let her do it,"
Johnson says.
Shannon was in the third grade at Thomas G. Hayes Elementary in 1997 when
the school system began a reform effort that mainly targeted elementaries.
Although significant and measurable improvements resulted, test scores show
that Shannon left Thomas G. Hayes without the skills to pass the Maryland
Functional math exam or score at grade level in reading on the national
Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills.
Worried about sending Shannon to Dunbar or Lombard, the middle schools closest
to home, Johnson considered alternatives but either couldn't afford them
or couldn't secure a space. Sending Shannon to Lombard has been all right,
she says, because of Principal Gwendola Taliaferro, who is overseeing the
school's 820 children for her second year.
"She's really trying to build that school up," Johnson says.
And Johnson sees improvement in Shannon's first-quarter report card. Her
grade-point average was 85.2 - good enough for a spot on the honor roll.
Like her grandmother, Shannon is proud of her performance.
"They're making it harder in seventh grade because they trying to get
us ready for high school," she says. Baltimore Middle Schools -- Second
in a series of occasional articles about an ambitious plan to transform
a failing Baltimore middle school -- SERIES 1. "If I can stay, so can
you": Arnetta Hall, the self-described "Wicked witch of Lombard
Middle" in East Baltimore, looks at a completed homework assignment
by seventh-grader Shannon Carter. 2. Words: Shannon and her language arts
classmates spend time writing in their journals, drafting paragraphs and
practicing for the Maryland Functional writing exam. 3. Achievement First:
Seventh-grader Shannon Carter gets tired of the any writing assignments
but knows she will benefit from all the practice.
===============================================
May 13 2002
Los Angeles Times
Building a Power Base for Better Education
Community: Alliance Schools' goal is to give all parties, especially
parents, an active role in solving problems.
By JOSE CARDENAS
TIMES STAFF WRITER
At 42 campuses throughout Los Angeles County, a grass-roots movement is
underway to show how a school's disparate constituencies--parents, teachers,
principals and support staff--can band together to solve problems. Their
name captures their mission: "Alliance Schools."
The aim is to give all parties, especially parents, a say in how to improve
a school, from controlling dangerous traffic on nearby streets to deciding
how to spend the budget.
In Texas, Alliance Schools are a legendary statewide network of elementary
and high schools whose parents, teachers and administrators over two decades
worked to become an influential force in that state's school reform debate.
In Texas and now Los Angeles, Alliance Schools are part of the complex community
organizing work of the Industrial Areas Foundation, for decades a prominent
group nationally in the grass-roots activism movement.
The foundation's organizing tools--house meetings, seminars and retreats--are
designed to galvanize people around common concerns and prepare them to
be active in civic affairs.
The organizing that has been occurring over the past year at Sierra Park
Elementary School east of downtown Los Angeles illustrates the patient process
of building that power.
After months of house meetings and one-on-one chats, the effort finally
paid off one recent Saturday morning for about 300 parents, teachers and
school staff who gathered on campus for a short rally. Then, chanting and
carrying signs, they dispersed into the square-mile neighborhood around
the school to knock on doors.
The aim was to ask parents what they thought were the main problems hindering
their students at the low-performing--though improving--school.
"We want you to get involved in your children's education," parents
such as Cynthia Benitez, mother of two daughters at Sierra Park, exhorted
other parents who opened their doors.
The march, called a Walk for Success, is a benchmark for parents and staff
organized under the foundation's principles--the first fruit of their labor
after months of organizing.
"I felt that we all needed that first step," said parent Valerie
Munoz, "to bring us together as parents and teachers and administrators--people
in the community."
Last summer the foundation received the blessing of Los Angeles Unified
School District Supt. Roy Romer to begin organizing parents, teachers, classified
employees and administrators at 25 campuses.
"I believe in community organizing," Romer said in an interview.
"We share common roots and interests in how you bring renewed energy
into instruction."
A year later, foundation organizers are working at 27 L.A. Unified schools--such
as Trinity Street in South Los Angeles, Park Avenue in Cudahy and North
Hollywood High--and expect the number to grow to 35 by year's end. The group
is also working at 15 schools in Pomona, Pasadena, Lynwood, Compton and
Glendale.
To band together different campuses, the foundation holds conferences where
school leaders can discuss the issues they all face. Last year more than
700 delegates attended the foundation's education summit at Occidental College.
About 400 delegates gathered recently at Sacred Heart Church in Lincoln
Heights for the foundation's Spring Assembly, where they urged local superintendents
to send principals to Alliance Schools training.
Alliance Schools' aim is to transform what the foundation sees as hierarchical
chains of command at schools--orders trickling down from the top--to systems
in which all parties, particularly parents, participate equally in improving
children's education.
Foundation staffers do not run the schools or set agendas. Instead, they
train educators and parents on how to work together.
Educator Writes Books on Texas Movement
The work of Alliance Schools in Texas is seen by some in academia as unique
in school-reform strategies.
"It's some of the best stuff going on," said Dennis Shirley, chairman
of Boston College's department of teacher education, who has written two
books on the Texas movement. "The critical piece is the parent-engagement
component.... You can't be a victim: 'My life is hopeless, I can't do anything
to improve my life.'"
Like foundation organizers, Shirley prefers the word "engagement,"
rather than "involvement," to describe parents' role.
The difference to him is that engagement grants parents power, such as helping
a principal determine how to spend a budget. Parental involvement as practiced
in most schools, Shirley said, is a more passive role, in which parents
help with activities, such as reading to a group of children, but are kept
out of the decision-making process.
The foundation hopes that its work in schools here eventually will equal
its record in Texas, where the organization has the ear of state education
officials and politicians are eager to speak at the Alliance Schools' annual
conference.
"We are not trying to replicate Alliance Schools per se," said
Ken Fujimoto, a foundation organizer working with schools on the Eastside.
"We are trying to learn from the experience of Texas."
In L.A., organizers are selecting schools with principals open to the group's
philosophies, particularly those open to parents' constant presence on campus.
"What we want to do here is to engage the parents to have some type
of ownership of the community and the schools," said Eugene Hernandez,
principal of Sierra Park.
What sets Alliance Schools' strategy apart is its aim of turning parents
and school personnel into a voting bloc.
"If you want more resources for things like after-school programs,
they're not going to hand them over just because you ask for them,"
Fujimoto said. Politicians "have to feel there's a constituency out
there."
"I don't think there are, in my humble opinion, a whole lot of other
people who are trying to fight for school reforms, thinking about the question
of power," he added.
Alliance Schools is not the first time that activists associated with the
Industrial Areas Foundation have spoken out on school reform in Los Angeles.
Some of the ideas for the LEARN Schools strategy--which sought to increase
local control of schools and was implemented at about 400 L.A. Unified campuses--started
with foundation-affiliated community activists.
But the strategy, launched in 1993, was shaped by numerous other voices
in the community and school district officials. L.A. Unified has shut down
the office that used to coordinate LEARN programs, but at many schools the
LEARN committees, composed of school principals, parents and civic leaders,
still meet in an unofficial capacity.
In the end, foundation organizers argue, the LEARN program did not include
the parental involvement that Alliance Schools worked to achieve in more
than 120 schools in Texas.
The crown jewel of Alliance Schools' success there is a yearly grant from
the Texas Legislature. The grant has provided millions of dollars to support
Alliance Schools' projects at individual schools, such as special training
for parents and teachers or improving facilities.
In one of his books about Alliance Schools, "Community Organizing for
Urban School Reform," Shirley presented five case studies of low-performing
schools that turned things around.
One was Ysleta Elementary in El Paso where, as frequently happens at Alliance
Schools, the most pressing concern parents had was not education but safety.
The Ysleta community had long complained about the lack of crosswalks and
traffic lights around the school.
Finally, after a girl was hit by a car, angry parents formed a traffic committee
and, through a series of confrontational meetings with public officials,
got them to install various traffic controls.
Another concern was the children's health. The parents took a survey and
found that many children came to school sick because their families could
not afford medical or dental care. So, the school acquired funding and opened
a health center.
The school also opened a parents center where adults could brush up on math
and reading to help their children do homework.
The actions paid dividends in the classroom. One example: In 1993, according
to Shirley's book, only 27% of Ysleta's fourth-graders passed the reading
portion of a state test. But by 1994, 61% passed the same portion.
'They Had People From Everywhere"
Such successes are all the talk at the annual Texas Alliance Schools conference.
Some of the parents, teachers and principals organizing in the Los Angeles
schools have traveled to the conference. Sierra Park fifth-grade teacher
Rafael Alvarez Jr., who helped organize his school's Walk for Success, found
it inspiring.
"They had people from everywhere: El Paso, Houston, Dallas, Austin,"
he recalled. "They talked about the problems they have been able to
tackle. That brought in the big picture: These are the possibilities."
Now Sierra Park, like other L.A. schools, is reaching for those possibilities.
After the school's Walk for Success, the next weekly evening meeting drew
about 40 parents and school staff.
The No. 1 concern they heard during their walk was that numerous stray dogs
roam the neighborhood. As a result, the group assigned someone to invite
L.A. City Councilman Nick Pacheco to their next meeting to ask for his help.
But Sierra Park has bigger goals, such as forming a "parent academy"
where parents can learn academic skills.
So, with those goals in mind, the Walk for Success marked just the beginning
of a long journey.
"When I first started, I thought it was going to be one walk and we
were going to see instant change," said Benitez, a parent leader. "Now
I see it's going to take a lot of time and energy."
===============================================
4-07-02
St. Louis Post Dispatch
Academy's First Graduates Step from Poverty to Success
By Matthew Franck
Of The Post-Dispatch
In John MaGee's 8th grade math class, Micah Lawrence ventures up to the
front row and leans on the desk of classmate David Merino, to figure out
the problem before them.
The soon-to-be graduates of the tiny Loyola Academy middle school have transcended
the hazards of poverty and urban life to earn tickets this spring to selective
prep schools.
They are college material now. They are successes, and they know it.
But on this night, in the moments before they will perform the school's
production of "12 Angry Men," they're a cooped-up bundle of stage
fright.
They wait off-stage in a glorified utility closet and pretend -- like most
boys their age would -- that they couldn't be forced to care about a play.
But they do. It's in their eyes and their jittery stance.
Two days of spring break and countless recesses have fallen victim to rehearsal
after rehearsal.
In a sense, almost everything they have studied since they came to the school
three years ago has led to understanding, memorizing and performing this
play.
Frank Corley, the principal of the Catholic school, thinks of the production
as the boys' "capstone" experience at the school. He huddles with
them in the closet, calms their nerves and leads them in a Hail Mary.
Within minutes, the 13 of them - portraying 12 jurors and a guard - are
under the stage lights, in front of parents, teachers and the school's financial
backers.
It is a moment that represents the maturation of a bold idea in urban education.
Since the fall of 1999, educators at Loyola , 3854 Washington Avenue, have
quietly worked to make sure that city kids find their college potential.
The school relies on an approach predicated on longer school days, weeks
and years.
Boys study at Loyola from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., plus half-days on Saturday.
Their summer vacation lasts but a month.
In class, they are showered with personal attention. The school enrolls
just 48 students, and yet it employs nine full-time educators.
And thanks to an outpouring of donations, the school is able to spend more
than $10,000 per pupil annually - all while collecting as little as $25
a month from parents.
"I don't brag about us, because I know we've got it real good,"
Corley said.
Still, as the school polishes its first class of eighth-graders, its success
rate is impressive. Each one of this year's graduates will attend his first
choice of Catholic high schools.
Several are attending the most elite schools in the region - places like
St. Louis University High, Christian Brothers College high school and Cardinal
Ritter High School - where nearly all graduates head to college.
And it's not just that they are getting in the high schools. Test results
suggest that some of the boys are entering near the top of the incoming
class.
"Everything they throw at me I'm ready to accomplish," said David
Merino, who is bound for St. Mary's High School.
Tall expectations
Micah Lawrence is also among the school's standouts - though at a mere 5
feet and 84 pounds, he stands nearly a half-foot shorter than the other
graduates.
In the play, Micah has been cast as the role of foreman over the rough and
rowdy jury. Several times, the part calls for him to break up fights - a
gutsy effort that repeatedly draws laughter from the audience.
When he entered the school as a sixth-grader, Micah told a reporter that
he was just getting used to the long hours. His mother has awakened him
each morning at 5:30 to take a succession of buses to school from their
home in East St. Louis. He doesn't return home until well after 7 p.m.
Today, he said, he has a different attitude about the rigorous schedule
- including the Saturday classes.
"I'm starting to do it because I want to come," he said.
Micah's mother, Kim Enlow Nelson, doubts he would have headed to such a
high school without coming to Loyola. As a single parent, she said, paying
bus fare - much less keeping her son in such a rigorous school - was often
a challenge.
But the rewards are obvious. Now he's heading to St. Louis University High
School, and he's set on becoming a graphic designer. For college, he's looking
at Duke University.
"It doesn't have to be Duke," she said. "It can be anywhere."
Parent Jadine Walters attributes the school success to its "gentle,
in-your-face" approach that doesn't give most boys the opportunity
to fail.
Not everyone meets the demands of the school. Of the 19 who started as sixth-graders
in 1999, eight have returned to public school. And the school doesn't pretend
that it can always help children who aren't willing to put forth the effort.
The school recruits students who show potential for college and have at
least one responsible adult in their lives. More than 80 percent of the
children live in poverty. Just two of this year's graduates live with their
biological fathers.
A model for success
The school was founded when a group of educators - including many with ties
to St. Louis University High - felt that to help boys in some urban neighborhoods,
they needed to start in middle school.
Loyola follows the Nativity model, named for a school in New York that has
turned out successes for more than 20 years. More than three dozen similar
schools have opened nationwide.
In St. Louis, Loyola has sparked the formation of two other Nativity schools.
The Marian Middle School, 3112 Meramec Street, serves girls; the De La Salle
Middle School opened for boys and girls last year in the Ville neighborhood.
At Loyola, donors have showered the school with support, covering most of
the cost of operation. More remarkable still, in three short years the school
has set up an endowment that's the envy of even affluent, well-established
private schools. When the campaign is complete, the school will have $3.6
million in reserve.
Rusty Hager, the School Board president, is among the audience members who
organized the fund-raising. He said that to loosen purse strings, the school
need only to invite a donor for a visit. "We bring them in at 7:45
for breakfast, and by 8:30 we own them," he said.
Hager said donors want only to believe that their investment in education
is paying dividends. At Loyola, he said, they see the proof.
Alfred Vann, Loyola's full-time social worker, agrees that the school has
set the boys on a path but hasn't seen them to their destination.
"They show brilliance in their ability, but they are just mastering
the techniques," he said. "They do well sporadically, but they
aren't there yet." The real test, Vann said, will come two or three
years from now, in a large high school.
Corley says the school will continue to support the boys as they move to
high school. He knows they are academically prepared, and he's banking on
their success.
Still, he fears that the boys are "not going to have someone that can
give them a hug, someone who knows every minute of their day like we do.
They will be in a big pond."
But those are concerns for another day. The night of the play is a time
to stand back and marvel at what the boys have become.
The production isn't high drama, but it is more ambitious than what most
grade schools might pull off. And the play's theme of doing right by those
who might have been victimized by the system has particular resonance here.
The production winds down without a single missed line. It ends when the
final juror, played by Evelio Merino - a towering boy with the dimensions
of a man - finally relents to join the others in a verdict of not guilty.
The duct-taped network of lighting goes dark. The applause is furious.
And on this night, there's not a person in the crowd who doubts what these
13 boys can do.
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