The Starvation Diet of One School

[A Parent Perspective from Oakland's Sharon Higgins.]

I recall watching a PBS documentary several years ago, before the double nightmare of NCLB and a state-takeover further destabilized my public school district. The program was called “First to Worst” and told how California, once home to one of the best school systems in the country, had ended up as one of the worst. The decline was caused by severely reduced education funding which resulted from the 1978 passage of Prop 13.

So, after years of being slowly starved to death and then getting blamed for not accomplishing more, school districts like mine, the ones most abandoned by the middle class, were then targeted for outsider-led “school reform.” These days, staff turnover in Oakland Unified is higher than ever before, being both a consequence, and the cause, of widespread system disarray.

Once upon a time, even urban public school districts had a precious commodity called institutional memory, something which had built up for decades. When the reformers arrived, this long-term memory was quickly wiped out. And now on an ongoing basis it seems, any short-term memory is, too.

Because so many schools are opening and closing, and everything between, and because so many people are constantly new to their positions, no one remembers what happened before, or what was once tried and what might have worked, or not. Few people remember how certain things are done, or know the people to ask who might be able to help them. Sometimes people have no idea where important light switches are. These days, urban school district life is a never-ending attempt to reinvent some sort of wheel.

With so much of the memory lost, I’ve enjoyed discovering that school memorabilia, class photos, and yearbooks are valuable sources of information about the “old days.” The trick is to hope those treasures haven’t been tossed in the garbage can by one of the many short-term employees who could care less about such things.

In 2001, when I started working as a parent coordinator at my daughter’s middle school, I discovered old yearbooks, PTA documents, and photos tucked in various neglected cupboards and corners around campus. Dusty and mildewed, I quickly rescued them and provided a new home – a big locked closet in my room. The school’s first class graduated in 1930, so the items held a lot of rich history. They are also tangible evidence of things that have changed.

I was interested to learn that some of the school’s former features had strong similarities to “innovations” being tried today. From 1930 to the 1950’s, each grade level was split into two groups of 140 to 150 students. A neighbor who attended the school in the 1940’s told me that the two class groups were organized according to age. Today, “small learning communities” have become all the rage.

Another contemporary idea is to provide students with teachers and counselors who stay with a class of students from the 9th through the 12th grade. That’s funny because this school used to do something like that, too, before services were whittled away.

The school had homerooms from 1930 until the 1970’s. Students were alphabetically assigned to these classes which met for a short time each day to take care of assorted school business. The best thing about them was that students were kept together in the same group, in the same homeroom, with the same teacher – for all three years they attended the school. Think of the peer and teacher bonding!

I’ve spoken with both former teachers and students who had very fond memories of their homerooms because of the deep relationships that developed over the years. One 1933 alumna told me how her class group bonded so tightly with their teacher that they had annual reunions with her for more than 60 years afterward.

Coinciding with the effects of Prop 13, and the material presented in “First to Worst,” I noticed in the yearbooks that a definite decline occurred from the 1980’s on. Unfortunately, it has accelerated in recent years.

The 1997 yearbook shows three guidance counselors (one for each grade), a full-time librarian, two assistant principals and a dean, for about 1050 students.

During 2004-05 the school’s enrollment was about 950 kids. The librarian position had been eliminated, but a library clerk worked part-time. The school was down to one guidance counselor and two assistant principals, along with two TSA’s (“Teachers on Special Assignment”) to do other administrative things. One TSA managed testing and the school’s budget. The other managed the school’s extensive English Language Learning program. Each also taught a daily reading class.

During 2007-08, the enrollment was down to about 900 kids (150 fewer than in 1997). The school still had a library clerk, one guidance counselor and two assistant principals, but the TSA’s were gone, pressured out because they were just too expensive. One of the assistant principals, with an already full plate of duties, was placed in charge of the English Language Learning program. Somehow, a “fiscal officer” without much school budget experience had been hired to manage the school’s money. The principal was pleased because the “fiscal officer” worked reduced hours and was employed as consultant, so benefits did not have to be paid.

Despite those sad changes at the school, a few things have stayed the same. One of my favorite discoveries was an entertaining article published in a student newspaper of December 1933 which could have been published today:

“Wanted: More School Pride”

How many Bret Harte students have noticed the growing untidiness of the streets and sidewalks immediately surrounding our school? Everyone must have seen the paper bags, candy wrappers, and orange peelings that are disfiguring the entrances to Bret Harte. These things lower our school in the estimate of our visitors and disgust the people living near. It is not necessary to throw such things around for there are garbage cans conveniently placed in the school grounds. Locate these cans and use them. This disorderly condition of the streets should be changed. Let’s all pay more attention to making our school an object of pride to the district.

Of course, it came as no real surprise to me to learn that teenagers are teenagers are teenagers.