Chapter Seven: School's Open - Welcome to the Working Week

Section II: Autumn 2002 – the first academic quarter
Chapter 7: School’s Open – Welcome to the Working Week

Before school opened that August 2002, there were some things I already knew about my students. Reading through reports printed from the Herald County Public School database I learned that 80% of Prospect students are male. The racial balance changes with each new arrival, but typically the students are almost evenly divided between black and white students: 50% black, 45% white and 5% Hispanic students. They are poor, over 85% are eligible for free or reduced price breakfast and lunch. And with few exceptions, they are all angry.

Three rationales for transferring children out of public schools and into alternative schools are frequently cited. The most common explanation is that it is done for the sake of the other well-behaved students: “We have to give teachers back the power to discipline.” “Get the bad kids out of the classroom so the good kids can learn.” “Pull the weeds so the flowers can grow.” Then there is the ever-pressing desire (some would say obligation) to punish the children who are bad: “They need to learn there are consequences.” The final rationale is the belief that some children need a more restrictive environment in which to learn both behavior and academics.

I also knew that most of the children who are assigned to Prospect School have pages and pages of discipline files. Occasionally I read a student file in which a seemingly well-behaved student with no documented discipline infractions is expelled for breaking a “zero tolerance” rule such as bringing a knife or drugs to school. But most of our students, while in public school, received multiple suspensions for many infractions. Common misbehaviors include fighting, violent acts, and behavior that is deemed threatening, disruptive or sexual in nature. The public school has usually tried and documented many interventions including parent conferences, in-school suspensions, counseling and multi-day out of school suspensions. But when a child continues to be disruptive, exhibiting behaviors that interfere with classroom instruction, that child is seen as taxing the school’s resources. It takes time for these multiple behavioral referrals to accumulate. Henry, my public school liaison, must approve all requests for students to transfer to Prospect.

Henry won’t approve a principal request for a student transfer if the student has only one or two referrals. He shared an anecdote with me about refusing a principal’s request to transfer a child with no “priors” after the child threw an open bag of potato chips in the cafeteria. Although Henry must approve all principal requests for transferring children to alternative schools, the severity of the misbehaviors that result in a transfer to Prospect varies from school to school. A middle school in an affluent neighborhood will define a disruptive student differently from a middle school in a lower income neighborhood. Each principal has his or her own threshold for tolerating misbehavior. When we receive a referral from Rex Stewart, my mentor and the principal in one of the poorest sections of Herald County, we know the child is VERY troubled. Rex works long and hard to help his students and at some level views students he transfers to Prospect as a personal failure.

When Henry approves transferring a child to an alternative school, he can select from four alternative schools that contract to provide services for Herald County Public School children: ESAK, SBAA, Avenue School and Prospect. Each of these alternative schools has criteria for incoming students, and depending upon a child’s grade, age, gender and academic performance there may be only one appropriate alternative school assignment.

Ebencorp is the parent company for both ESAK and Prospect. ESAK is designed for students ages 14-18, primarily those who have been in trouble with the law. Students who attend ESAK typically spend part of their day preparing for the GED and the rest of the day working at a minimum wage job. Few ESAK students graduate with a standard high school diploma, more likely they earn a GED. Ideally there should be no competition between ESAK and Prospect for students. However since many Prospect students have been held back more than once, there are several who are at least 14 years old and could attend middle school classes at Prospect or pre-GED classes at ESAK.

SBAA accepts only 40 girls ages 12-18. SBAA always has a waiting list so there is no real competition between SBAA and the other alternative schools. In the past, I’ve had a bias against schools that segregate on the basis of gender. However, very soon my experiences with troubled girls at Prospect will change my opinion as I realize some adolescent girls clearly function best in an all-female environment.

Although the Avenue School enrolls students from kindergarten through high school, it only accepts “Special Education” (children labeled as handicapped – physically, emotionally, mentally) high school students. The elementary and middle school students are both “regular education” and Special Education, but there is a clear understanding that the school prefers Special Education students.

In the parlance of alternative school contracts, Special Education students are “worth more” than regular education children. Henry, my liaison with Herald County schools uses a worksheet to determine how much Herald County will spend on contracted services. This worksheet shows a higher multiplier for children in kindergarten through third grade, for high school students, and a much higher multiplier for special education students. When Herald County wrote the Prospect contract, they wanted to ensure there would be plenty of empty seats at Prospect for all their “naughty” students, most of whom would be regular education middle schoolers, the students for whom the fewest dollars would flow.

Since Henry is unlikely to approve a transfer for a student who lacks multiple referrals, we typically find very few students are transferred in the first two months of the school year since they haven’t had enough time to accumulate “referrals.” But there is a loophole: any child who was previously at an alternative school can be returned to the alternative school at any time, no questions asked.

At the end of last school year there were over 150 students at Prospect. My Ebencorp bosses told me I should expect at least 100 of them to be re-enrolled at Prospect on the first day of school. Given the long history of our students’ discipline problems, rarely is a student ready to return to public school after less than one year in an alternative school. In addition to Prospect students engaging in classroom misbehavior, most have serious problems not likely to be resolved in a few months or even a year, if ever: truancy, poverty, abuse, anger control issues and drug addiction. Moreover, when Prospect students do return, they aren’t exactly welcomed back to their old public schools with open arms. The students and teachers who were victimized by Prospect students or who had classes disrupted by Prospect students, remember and, with good reason, are cynical and dubious that these students are “reformed.” Thus it is rare that a Prospect student is a good candidate to return to public school.

But on the days leading up to opening day, I learn that last year Mel, my predecessor, decided that of the 150 Prospect students, he would return all but 40 to public school. Did he do this because he genuinely felt they deserved a second chance? Or was this his passive-aggressive revenge as he realized he was losing his job? Did Mel think: if there are no Prospect students the school will have to close? I can’t know the mind of Mel but the boatloads of Prospect students he launched into the public schools begin to haunt me before on the first day of school. As July turned to August, public school teachers and principals began to look at their student rosters and shudder as they eyes widened at those dreaded names from the past. Then they picked up their phones to call me and complain.
D-Day

For as long as I can remember, whether I was a student, teacher or principal, I can never get to sleep on the night before the first day of school. This year is no different.
I finally abandon any pretense of slumber, get up and run laps in the dark, finding strength in the stars. I arrive at Prospect early brimming with equal amounts of enthusiasm and fear.

My cell phone rings and in my few months at Prospect, I already know these early morning calls never bring good news. Shasta, my transportation manager tells me bus driver Wanda just called in sick and Shasta has to drive for her. After a summer of bus headaches I should have known we’d open school with bus problems.

When I start our 8:00 staff meeting Ernie, one of my counselors, is missing but the rest of the staff accepts my pep talk despite clichés about first impressions, smiling faces and optimism. At 9:00, when the busses arrive, on time despite the last minute Wanda substitution, the staff and I are ready and waiting in the parking lot to greet the students with hugs and handshakes. Teachers and all the support staff (except Ernie who still hasn’t arrived) work together to shepherd the students into lines according to their class assignments.

Over the summer I worked with the Prospect staff to develop class rosters and schedules. I introduced the concept of “houses” or teams of teachers who will work closely together explaining that the students in each house will have their own homeroom teacher, but will be taught their core subjects by each of the teachers in their house.

I try to create teams of teachers who work well together and have complimentary skills, I then work to place students in a house with teachers who have a teaching style that will best match the child’s learning style and discipline needs. By keeping all my middle school classrooms as multi-grade (6-8) I have the flexibility to place students where they will be most successful and I don’t run into situations whereby I have a seventh grader but no room in the seventh grade classroom.

Multi-grade classes and “houses” are new concepts for the Prospect staff and although I take time over the summer to introduce these ideas and the underlying rationales, the Prospect staff scowls and resists every change; anything un-Mel-like is suspect.

In assigning students to houses I take a number of variables into account. I consult with Stephanie to get her read on the child. Stephanie was here last year and knows the returning students and as Orientation leader, all new students spend at least a week in Stephanie’s classroom before they are assigned to a house and teacher. When assigning students, I also look at their test scores. Within each house I try to assign students to homerooms based on reading ability. By putting all the top readers in one room and the lowest readers in another room, it makes it easier to instruct English, Social Studies and Science. I also pay attention to peer relationships since many of my students were involved in fights in their former schools and some are court ordered not to be near their co-victim. Parents and probation officers frequently lambaste me for not following these court orders (“She isn’t to be within 50 feet of him”) but with both perpetrators in my school, it is hard to strictly enforce some of these court mandates. I do make sure I don’t assign these non-contact students to the same homeroom and usually not to the same house. In placing students, I work to maintain a racial and gender balance so I don’t have all boy or all black classrooms. Like everything else at Prospect, I never have time to ruminate and ponder my selections due to competing priorities, but I do put into place the structures to make these student placements rapidly.

I maintain a roster of class lists. It is organized by House and teacher and including student names, grades, birthdates, home phones, test scores and salient comments. I have to update it several times a week as new students arrive, students leave and, less frequently, children move from class to class. Last year my predecessor, Mel, moved children from teacher to teacher constantly. Anytime a parent complained about a teacher, or a teacher complained about a student, and even sometimes when students complained about their teachers, Mel took the path of least resistance and reassigned the student. Chaos and confusion reigned. I made a pact not to do this but this means fending off pressure from students, parents, teachers and counselors.

Off the busses and lined up in the parking lot, the students look around and start to grumble about the new procedures, the new principal, their missing teachers and the new teachers. They blame me for the absence of their “favorite teachers” shouting aloud “Where’s Mr. Stan at? What happened to Miss Dede? Why you fire them? These queries are interspaced with cursing. The new teachers try to hush their classes, but veteran teachers, Stone and Rosie, appear to be enjoying the anger and accusations – these students are expressing their sentiments. The ever-perceptive Prospect students, empowered by the silence of the veteran staff, become bolder in their principal blaming, name-calling and retorts.

Ernie doesn’t arrive until after the students have been sorted and led into their classrooms. Ernie’s excuse for tardiness has to do with his high school son starting school and the excuse turns to bragging as Ernie boasts about how he used the good ol’boy network to get his son in a better school than their neighborhood school.

I should have predicted that Ernie, like the bus drivers, would increase the tension level on opening day. But even during my most cynical moments, I never could have imagined the turmoil Ernie would cause on not only the first day of school but for many days yet to come. Arriving on campus, Ernie zeros right in on the students’ unhappiness with the staff and schedule changes. He is overheard telling students (who all adore him) that the new, mean principal has lengthened the school day, taken away their PE classes and fired some of the best teachers. Ernie proposes the students start a petition to get rid of me. When I confront Ernie he denies, denies, denies.

Principals expect plenty of confusion on the first day of school: bus route mix-ups, class schedule uncertainty, new unregistered students. A principal has to be, like a Boy Scout, always prepared. During my sleepless night I thought I had done imaginary walk-throughs of every potential trouble spot. But at Prospect we have another source of grief most principals don’t have: our students get arrested.

“Disruption of school function” is the standard crime for which my students are arrested. It is a broad, general crime that could be applied to just about all of my students on any given day.

The concept of arresting children for relatively minor misbehavior is both alien and anathema to me. Most schools in Herald County have an SRO, or School Resource Officer, who is assigned to this duty and develops a relationship with the school, its students and staff. But Prospect is different. At Prospect we have a different SRO every day with the deputies signing up for duty on their days off. It is hard to explain our students and my philosophy to a new deputy daily. Since this is their day off, some deputies are not interested in any headaches and arresting is easier than counseling.

Many of the deputies have never worked at an alternative school and don’t know what to make of a school full of naughty children. During the course of the year I frequently hear them joke that we should “arrest ‘em all.” In Herald County during the 2002-2003 school year, approximately 40,000 children were enrolled in schools and of them, 2,830 were arrested. 26% of the ones who were arrested were age 13 or younger. Although I educate less than 1% of all Herald County students, my students account for nearly 10% of all arrests of children under age 13.

On the first day of school three of my students are arrested and like the busses and Ernie, student arrests will be a constant source of pain and frustration throughout my time at Prospect. On this day the Deputy does the actual arresting, but Ernie is the catalyst. Ionya, Torrey and LaQuanda are all the victims.

Ionya, fragile Ionya could be made of Spanish moss she is so delicate. Ionya is a very light skinned, twelve year old, black child. She attended Prospect last year and so far is continuing in the same vein this year. She eats chewed gum from the undersides of desks and has no friends. She is always hungry and begs extra food in the cafeteria. Ionya says while her mother is at work, her older sisters are in charge of her and they make her do all the work and won’t give her any food. Ionya’s mother says Ionya is a liar. But whenever Ruth, our cafeteria manager, asks Ionya to wipe off the tables and rewards her with extra food, Ionya inhales it.

LaQuanda is tough, compact and scowling. She has to be, she lives in a foster home; I think it is her 6th. Thirteen-year-old LaQuanda has dark black skin and angry burning eyes. She writes her name everywhere - on the porch railings, on her arm, on walls, in the bathroom -posting messages from an untethered, invisible child “Look world, LaQuanda was here.”

Torrey is a large, loud and brazen white girl who likes to pull up her shirt and show her breasts to the boys. Torrey is fourteen but looks like twenty and acts like eight.

Torrey and LaQuanda supposedly slapped Ionya’s face. Ernie takes them to the Deputy.

Deputies on school campuses tend to take their cues from the staff. When Ernie brings two girls to Deputy Rivera and tells him they assaulted another girl and Ernie thinks they should be arrested, the girls leave in handcuffs.

When children are arrested, the Deputy calls for another Deputy to take the child, in handcuffs, in a squad car, to the “JAC.” The JAC is the Juvenile Assessment Center, located next to the adult jail. The JAC does a risk assessment based on the child’s criminal history. How many “points” does a child have as far as the JAC is concerned? Children amass points for crimes, and the number of points determines whether the child will be assigned “secure detention” (locked up in the JDC – Juvenile Detention Center), home detention (ankle bracelet to monitor) or sent home with a parent or guardian. A child who isn’t on probation and has no prior arrests is usually sent home, unless the child’s crime involves a weapon or aggravated assault. Frequently when parents are called to come pick up their child at the JAC, they tell the Deputy to keep the child. “She needs to be taught a lesson.” or “I can’t do a thing with her, you keep her.” Deputies then have to threaten the parents with arrest; failure to pick up the child is illegal child neglect.

Trail dates are set, often 6-18 months in the future, although rarely do juvenile cases go to trial. Arrested children are encouraged to “plea out,” or admit their guilt in a hearing. Punishments for children with no priors or only a few “points” include community service, working Saturday mornings on the work farm, writing letters of apology, entering an “alternative sentencing program” such as teen court or MAD DADS (MAD DADS seeks to reduce crime by offering services like mentoring, vocational training, tutoring and alternative sentencing), getting anger control or anti-drug classes or some combination. Children who have amassed many “points” can be sentenced to a “program” otherwise known as boot camp. When the JAC determines the number of points make the child a risk to release, the child stays in the JDC until a hearing. At a hearing, the judge decides the child either needs to stay until he or she pleads guilty, gives a sentence at a prison or boot camp, or sends the case to trial.

At JDC children are issued orange jump suits, sleep two to a room and attend classes with half a dozen other children. But mostly they sit in large rooms with nothing to do but watch television. There are few fights since the guards carry pepper spray. Those who fight are put in “confinement”: a padded room with a toilet. Children are supposed to stay in confinement at least an hour but no more than three days at a time. A therapist is assigned to meet with the children, but they often meet sitting on the floor in the hallways. If a parent phones, a child may talk no longer than 15 minutes per day. Parents are permitted to visit once a week and are charged $7 per night for every night their child is incarcerated.

LaQuanda and Torrey need to be punished, but arrested? I meet with Ernie. I explain my philosophy of dealing with misbehavior in-house and avoiding arrests. I remind him ALL our students are here because of their antisocial, often violent, behavior. We don’t solve anything by arresting them. Ernie, as always, says he absolutely agrees with me then shifts blame, thus time it’s to the Deputy. He was the one who decided to arrest them.

I emphasize to Ernie that from now on, no one is to be arrested without my knowledge and permission. I write up our discussion and hand it to him as a verbal warning, reading it aloud to be sure he understands. His attitude is agreeable and pleasant. But within a few hours, I see it was an act of pure optimism to believe Ernie would change his behavior in response to anything I say or do.

Meanwhile Lynne is piling up the messages from unhappy Herald County principals. Former Prospect students, passengers on Mel’s own Muriel Boatlift, are appearing in their public school classrooms on the first day of school just as angry, belligerent, violent and disruptive as when they were sent to Prospect. The principals are annoyed at Prospect (and by default, at me). My phone is ringing with indignation

The Deputy calls me to his office shortly after LaQuanda and Torrey are arrested to discuss Marcus. When I arrive, I am upset to see Marcus in handcuffs. Marcus is a thirteen year old, black boy who weighs 200 pounds and is six feet tall. When his hair is nicely braided, Marcus is usually fairly calm. But when the braids are out and his hair is big and wild, so too is Marcus. Marcus’s mother is supportive and patient. She and Marcus stopped by the school several times over to summer just to talk with me and reassure me she will come to school in a heartbeat to pick Marcus up when he misbehaves. In addition to Marcus, she has a multiply-handicapped grown daughter at home who is dying.

I am unable to “undo” Marcus’s arrest. Counselor Ernie tells me he was running a counseling group and Marcus tried to choke Luke and luckily Ernie was there to remove Marcus. When Ernie is done telling me how he was the hero I remind him that he was to inform me prior to any arrests. He looks confused, wrinkling his nose and tilting his head to one side like a small boy who has conveniently forgotten he wasn’t to eat cookies before dinner.

And now for the rest of the first week

I felt like having survived the first day of school, it HAD to get easier. How naive and foolish.

Once again on the second and third days of school Wanda calls in sick and Shasta has to drive for her.

The second day of school also starts with a cell phone call at 7:15 a.m. It is Audra and her bus won’t start and she can’t contact Shasta because Shasta is driving Wanda’s bus and the new CB radios for the busses didn’t arrive on time and are due to be installed today and she can’t call Shasta’s cell phone because Shasta is fighting with Verizon about roaming charges and her phone has been “suspended for nonpayment.” Audra comes into the office to phone parents telling them the bad news. Audra must wait until the other busses arrive at the school at 9:00 then she will take one out to run her route. She will be very late. Parents are not pleased. Parents phone to curse at me most of the morning.

Prospect schedules differ from those in public schools in several aspects. With the exception of some of our portables that have built-in bathrooms, the teacher must accompany the entire class to the bathroom 3-4 times a day since our students cannot be trusted to come and go on their own. I also encourage the teachers to schedule frequent “VE” or vigorous exercise breaks, but they resist and when I insist, they skip them.

After the busses arrive at 9:00, and the students are met by the entire staff, principal included, students line up in front of their homeroom teacher for uniform inspection and, once the line is silent, proceed either to their classroom or the cafeteria for breakfast. By 10:00 all students have had breakfast and for the next two hours there should be little movement on campus as teachers instruct reading, language arts and math classes. At noon the lunch rotation begins and there is a constant hum on campus as students move back and forth from bathrooms, the cafeteria, the playground and their classrooms for science and social studies lessons as well as counseling sessions. At 3:00 we have a school-wide activity period and by 4:00 the students are back on the busses and heading home. At leas that is the plan. Most days don’t go as planned.

I really had enough on my plate that first week of school without trying to orient a new teacher, but Crystal couldn’t start before school started, so I had her join the year already in progress.

Crystal just moved here from North Carolina. She and her husband relocated to Florida for his job in the grocery business. Crystal is very well dressed, put together and refined. Every hair is in place, every nail smoothly filed. Crystal taught middle schoolers in North Carolina; she describes teaching “tough kids in a bad neighborhood.” Crystal appears confident, self-assured with a take-no-prisoners attitude. Crystal is excited about the position and she and her husband move into Garden Path apartments, which my new teacher, holes-in-his shirt-Neeley, recommends. Before getting her own students, Crystal observes the Prospect teachers. She is nonplussed by the behavior she observes in the other classrooms and eager to teach her own students. She tells Lynne when she gets her class "Those children won't mess with me. I'll show them respect and they'll do the same to me. I know how to deal with them." This comment worries me, my students do not show respect easily or quickly.

After Crystal’s first day with students, she asks to meet with me. She tells me she is appalled at the foul language used by the students and asks if I have a high teacher turnover rate. She tells me “in North Carolina even the bad children say ‘yes ma'am, no sir’ If they didn’t, their pappy’d give them a paddling!” I am not reassured by this discussion.

After Crystal’s second day with students, she again asks to meet with me. She tells me this is not a good job for her and she thinks she needs to quit. I listen to her complaints and dry her tears. I give her a pep talk and make an appointment to observe her class tomorrow to provide support and suggestions.

I observe Crystal’s class. After listening to her concerns and comforting her, I am surprised to see that Crystal has excellent classroom management skills. Her class is under control and well-organized lessons are being taught. She has a zero tolerance policy and it is working. But she is unnerved when students speak without raising hands or talk back to her. Crystal is not happy.

After Crystal’s third day with students she once more asks to meet with me and gives me her resignation. The day after tomorrow will be her last day. She tells me even the bad children in North Carolina aren’t this bad. She says when she observed two teachers separating some fighting girls, “my heart was racing and I was shaking like a leaf.”

Goodbye Crystal and hello to more insomnia as I reassign Crystal’s students and begin what will become a never-ending search for teachers.

On the fourth day of school, Wanda, the absent bus driver, returns to driving, but a student named Timmy gets off her bus in the morning telling me he is afraid to go into the cafeteria to eat breakfast. It seems Wanda told her passengers, as she drove them to school this morning, that the reason they can’t smoke on her bus this year is because someone “snitched” on Mr. Jed (my former obese driver) and he was fired and that the snitch is here on this bus right now. She apparently says this while pointing at Timmy. Jed was fired for failure to pass a physical, but Wanda either doesn’t know or prefers her version of the story. Regardless, the students are now divided into two camps. First are those who believe they have the right to smoke (both on the bus and at school) and think they can convince me to permit them to do so: “But Ms. Smee, we wouldn’t fight on the bus so much if we could smoke and not be so tense.” This group believes they can change my mind and get my permission to smoke on the bus. The second group of students also believes they have the right to smoke but they think they should do so without getting permission and just intimidate any tattletales. The “Let’s kill Timmy” contingent is simmering. Wanda tells transportation coordinator Shasta she feels sick and won’t be able to do her afternoon route. She goes home and we don’t hear from her for six weeks.

Wanda is off the bus.

Back in May I had six drivers on my budget spreadsheet but by August: Cherill, Jed and Wanda are gone. Nina, Quentin and Ellie are still here, along with my new hire, Audra. My bus problems have only just begun. Like a Greek chorus, the drivers keep materializing to serenade me with their tragic lamentations.

Expectations collide with Reality

Before coming to Prospect I imagined working with a team of dedicated, motivated teachers who wanted to help me save the world, or perhaps just a few children. Truly though, I don’t believe teachers need to be Mother Theresa. I don’t believe teaching is a “calling” requiring unending sacrifice. I just expected my employees would be here because they wanted to be here. I was wrong. Most of my teachers want to be somewhere else. Stone wants to be a Baptist minister but can’t find a church. Rosie wants to be a guidance counselor in the public schools but fears she has been black balled for a slight years ago. Noreen wants to teach in a public school again but her criminal record makes that unlikely. I don’t know what the others want but with a couple exceptions, my employees tear out of the driveway as soon as the busses leave. I expected a little more dedication, a little more caring and concern.

It’s okay if the staff doesn’t like me. I knew I would have to make some unpopular decisions, bosses always do. I just never envisioned a zero sum mentality in which changes that are good for the students, are seen as hurting the staff. Every time I talk with students or their parent to gain some insight into their problems and I communicate my findings with staff, they accuse me of sleeping with the enemy. Either I support teachers or I am a dupe for the students. My suggestion that teachers pay a visit to their students’ homes is met with revulsion and disbelief. I don’t mandate this, I just encourage it as a way to bond with the family and gain an understanding of the student to improve the chance of success in the classroom. No teachers avail themselves of this opportunity. I do mandate daily notes in planners and weekly phone calls home. I only have limited compliance with these expectations. I don’t surrender but without intending to, I adjust my tone, style and attitude to match the reality of what they are willing to do. Meanwhile, morning after morning I run in circles in the dark trying to develop creative solutions to the Ernie problem, the arresting of children, transportation woes, the difficulty of hiring and retaining competent teachers, the unmotivated staff problem and the crushing problems of the Ionyas, Torreys and LaQuandas.