Weekly sweatdrops

A glimmer of hope?

Wednesday before Thanksgiving we had our first period serenaded with the voice of Russ Thompson, District 7 Principal Leader, on the PA. He was stern and serious. He announced an apparent new set of policies for the new high school. Chronic tardiness will be result in detention. Defiance and threats of violence will be met with suspension and possibly expulsion. Wow!! That day transpired with a train of kids being sent to a room in the E building for detention assignments. Thompson mentioned over the PA how disturbed he was at the reports of violent incidents and defiance on the campus. I’m holding my breath with deeply curious anticipation at what will result in these next three weeks before the holiday recess. Could it be a genuine shake-up? Or will Beaudry Ave. step in and destroy any hope of improvement?

 Russ Thompson was principal at Gardena High School years ago. We have one former teacher at the new school who was at Gardena during that time. He credits Thompson with cleaning up the place. He says that Thompson was strict and fair, dealing out disciplinary consequences when they were needed. The district didn’t like the high suspension rates at Gardena. According to this eye-witness teacher, they pushed him out of the principal job. According to this teacher witness, the place deteriorated almost immediately.

 At our Tuesday fix-the-teacher “professional” development session, our “Yolie Flores” small school principal announced that the “site coordinator” at this new school would now be designated as the Principal for the entire school so that more decisions could be made at his level. It’s just humorous to see the Yolie Flores small school idea gradually break down due its inherent absurdities. Attendance has been a mess. It is still a mess. Now, periodic assessments have become a nightmare to try to administer. Next year I predict that the new school will be a comprehensive high school similar to others in the area.

 Our small school principal also announced that the entire campus would set up a “time-out” room in the cafeteria to handle the kids who can’t handle class. FINALLY, after almost three months of bedlam, the administration at this place is getting the message. They are actually seeing the wisdom that lies behind the set-up of comprehensive high schools throughout Southern California. This should have been done back in August. A time-out room, a single top principal, enforcement of rules rather than “counseling” and “paper trails” – things could have been so much different, but that would have run against the prevailing mentality of Beaudry Ave. which believes that the problem is the teacher.

 Russ Thompson appears to be a man who understands what the problem is. I wonder if anyone can even imagine our former principal at HPHS who is now a glorified “Principal Leader” in Local District 5 doing anything like this? I certainly cannot. I’ll never forget the School Site Council meeting in which he turned to me and said, “Well, you make it sound like it’s the students [fault].” DUH!! Get a clue Mr. UCLA grad. But will this announced crack down at the new high school turn out to be a case of too little, too late?  Time will tell. Stay tuned folks. 

 

The Saga of the new school escalates....

 

My experiences at the new school have given me a new understanding regarding administration. I can see now how terrible administrators are created by unrealistic expectations and game playing in the hope of career advancement. I see it happening right now.

 When the year began in early September at the new high school, there were high hopes and there was teamwork. Administrators were approachable. A few egos seemed to be exalted, but teachers nevertheless felt supported and affirmed. That was before “shell-shock” set in.

 I must credit the disaster that is unraveling at this place and other schools in the area to the deliberate “get soft” on the kids policies dripping down from Beaudry Ave. and from our superintendent, John Deasy himself. Teachers at this new school expected to be able to write out referrals and have kids removed from class when necessary. They expected to have the ability to teach in their own classrooms. They expected to be safe from harm by having appropriate outside supervision. They expected classified support staff which the district has decided is too expensive. They also expected real discipline which John Deasy has decided is a political liability. He doesn’t like suspensions and expulsions because they deprive the kids of valuable standards-based instruction.

 Our Yolie Flores small school principal does very little to enforce much of anything. I see him taking care of matters which directly affect him and giving official voice to official ideology. I characterize the man as dwelling in some kind of unreal ethereal realm of ideal instruction and ideal pupils just to come down from the pedagogical Mount of Transfiguration once in a while in order to bestow some sort of wisdom on us during Tuesday “fix-the-teacher” professional development time. He is already beginning to move into a “blame the teacher” mode of thinking. “If the teachers would just get the instructional component together, there would be no need for referrals.” A personal laptop has been stolen. The sprinkler system was turned on, flooding out the second floor. A pregnant teacher was attacked. Drugs are being sold on campus. Windows have been broken. Tagging is occurring with regularity. Yet, our silly principal gives voice to the imperative to post content standards on the board. I don’t think he’s actually been in a classroom in over a decade. Fortunately, he’s usually gone during class time. I have much better things to do with my time than post content standards for a class of 40 sophomores who wouldn’t understand the language or care.

 There is no “time-out” room. There is no “in-house” suspension place. There are only two campus supervisors and the two school cops are often busy with busts that take them off campus. We have two deans, but they are also teaching in order to save money for Beaudry Ave.  One dean is the sports director for the campus. If our local Yolie Flores sponsored small school secretary permits it, she will babysit a few miscreants during class time. That’s about it. Heaven help us if a serious life-threatening emergency erupts during class.

 A revealing, salient moment occurred during the last faculty meeting. Our site coordinator (the real acting principal for the campus) complained that when they did random weapons searches on the kids during class time, they noticed that teachers are allowing kids to wear hats in class and to listen to ipods. These are against school rules, he reminded the simmering faculty. Really? And when a confrontation explodes between a faculty member and a kid, are you going to defend the teacher? – Not likely. Teachers are utterly impotent, but they are still blamed for the problems that unsupervised kids who run amok with impunity create on campus.

 These are all familiar conditions. We had these issues at HPHS, but on a smaller scale. Discipline was eroding and “blame-the-teacher” games were multiplying, but there was a difference. At HPHS, a certain number of teachers and staff members actually bought into the district ideology. At this new place the truth is painfully obvious as we hold our breaths and wait for a disaster to unfold.