From The “So You Think You Had a Tough Day” Files…A Day in the Life of an Oakland Public-School Principal

Last year I joined the advisory board of a fairly low-profile, education-reform group called New Leaders. The group trains principals to work in tough urban schools, including those in Oakland. I joined the board when I was seven months pregnant and starting up a new communications-consulting business–so basically have served since then in a constant state of guilt that I’m not doing more to help this worthy organization. After our board meeting a few weeks ago, I was again reminded why.

At the meeting, four New Leaders “residents”, who will be full-fledged principals after a year of training, spoke about recent challenges at their schools and their efforts to move beyond them to better kids’ lives. It was a stark reminder of the obstacles they face–but also how New Leaders is effecting positive change in some of the roughest, most disadvantaged schools in the Bay Area. Brandi Patterson, the assistant principal at West Oakland Middle School, told us that all children at her school receive free or reduced-price lunch and breakfast. Such a high percentage of children there are poor that the school qualifies for 100% free lunch under a special federal program. She told me later that 80% of her students live with one parent, a grandparent or a foster parent. Seventy percent of the kids have experienced trauma, abuse or neglect.

Brandi is working hard to improve the school’s academic performance; West Oakland Middle’s state-measured “API” score, short for academic performance index, was a disappointing 574 last year. That was down from 616 the year before. (By contrast, the API score for my local, public elementary school in ritzy Palo Alto is 973, out of 1000.) But Brandi says the school’s instructional issues have to be addressed in a larger, cultural context: Kids have to feel safe at school, and feel that they are important and can succeed despite their often-chaotic home lives. This challenge was brought home to her early last month when one of her students–a member of the basketball team–was shot multiple times as he was riding his bicycle in the neighborhood around the school. The student was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Interestingly, Brandi notes, police didn’t respond to several 911 calls about the incident. A community member took the boy to the hospital in his own car.

The student, whose name is not being released, remains in the hospital. I’m sure focusing on instruction at West Oakland Middle since then has not been easy. Amazingly, I couldn’t find any news stories online about the shooting.

Across town, Javier Cabra is in his first year re-launching an Oakland charter school called Golden State College Preparatory Academy.  The school boasts all new teachers and staff compared with last year, and even a new physical building. But in Golden State’s case, a group of new teachers also means less-experienced teachers: Half the school’s instructors are in their first year of teaching. As with any profession, there is a steep learning curve for teachers in their first year. There also was some staff turnover this fall, although Javier—who finds time to study for an MBA in the evenings—has since managed to recruit permanent teachers to fill all the positions.

At the board meeting, Javier told us an amazing story about hiring a science teacher. The job candidate showed up at the school’s front office bleeding heavily from his face–he’d been jumped and beaten on his way from the BART station to the school. School administrators, who didn’t even know who he was at first, assumed he’d get some first aid and head out. (They even offered to take him to the hospital.) Instead, the candidate asked for the school’s after-school director, who was scheduled to interview him for the science position. He sat through the interview. The candidate–who had done pre-med coursework in college and he was a longtime substitute teacher–was hired. “We were so impressed with him willing to even sit in an interview” after what he’d been through, Javier said.

I relay these stories for a lot of reasons. But I mostly want to reinforce to people in our rarefied, upper-income tech bubble that the way we live, and our children live, is obviously quite privileged. It’s too easy to forget that the Bay Area is home to many children with all kinds of basic social, economic and educational needs. We need to help them by taking time out of our busy schedules to support the kind of work that tenacious leaders like Brandi and Javier are doing.

I have seen firsthand how New Leaders makes an impact on students’ lives. Last year, when I first joined the board of the organization, I visited Greenleaf Elementary School in East Oakland, run by New Leaders Principal Monica Thomas. Monica is a Stanford-educated veteran of Teach for America–she worked for five years in Compton, Calif.–who has the academic progress of each of her 450 students practically etched in her brain. In her office, she keeps a bulletin board she calls her “data board”. It’s filled with the name of every student at Greenleaf, and next to each name are pinned little pieces of paper listing each student’s recent test scores in language arts and math. The scores get changed around three times a year, every time the students are tested, and the names are starred when scores decline. So Monica always knows who is doing well and who needs help, and she can intervene immediately when she sees problems.

She basically runs the school like a well-organized, and successful, CEO. Her school’s API scores have shot up more than 225 points since she took over. By last year, 76% of her students met state standards in math and 51% were proficient in reading. That’s up from 26% proficiency in math and 15% in reading when she started at Greenleaf in 2006. If Monica worked at a Silicon Valley tech company, she’d probably be in line for a big bonus and scads of stock options.

But Monica doesn’t work at a for-profit company. She is a public-school principal helping kids. And at this time of year, I think we all should be thinking of ways we can help courageous leaders like her. I know I’m going to take some time away from Facebook updating, business-plan writing and PowerPoint-creating next year to spend more time trying to help New Leaders succeed. I owe it to them.

Advertisement