Chapter Twenty-Five: The Score at the End of the First Quarter

Chapter 25: The Score at the End of the First Quarter

May to October – tallying the score

I became principal of Prospect in May 2002, now it is October. During those five months I hired eleven new faculty members, three of whom departed before the ink was dry on their paperwork. Of the thirteen employees I inherited, six are still at Prospect. I also hired four new bus drivers and lost five leaving me with five drivers.

The staff turnover is troubling. I didn’t expect it would be quite so difficult to recruit and retain great teachers. When I accepted this position I didn’t realize my staff would be expected to work twelve months a year while their public school counterparts work ten, and that Prospect salaries would be below the public school pay scale. I didn’t realize the budget would be so tight that I would be forced to respond to the unremitting flow of students from the public schools to Prospect by operating in a constant hiring mode. One of my challenges is to hire teachers “just-in-time” to meet the ever-growing student population. If I hire too soon, I waste money and can’t balance the budget; if I hire too late, I have overcrowded classrooms with highly stressed teachers. I never expected the advertising, recruiting, interviewing, contacting references and hiring process to be all my responsibility with no support from Ebencorp’s HR department. Nor did I realize that all this hiring would have so many dead ends and be so frustrating. I’ve spoken with The Boss about the need to move the staff to a ten-month calendar and to work on raising salaries. So far he has not been supportive. In the meantime I need to find not just adequate, but terrific teachers to help my desperate students. I remain optimistic but I’m not sure I am being realistic.

During this nine-week academic quarter, we enrolled 87 students and lost 19, enrolling, on the average, half a dozen students every week. The growth in student enrollment was, on one hand, expected and planned. My contract with Herald County calls for a maximum of 200 students to be moved to Prospect over the course of the year. This is the nature of my school: as students misbehave they are transferred to us from public school. However, the increase in enrollment over these first three months has been more dramatic than it should have been. Enrollment trends for the past three years indicate we receive a steady flow of 3-4 students per week in August and September. We often don’t enroll any new students in October due to FTE week. (FTE stands for full-time equivalent and this is the week when students are counted for the purpose of school funding dollars. Very few principals are willing to lose “heads” just prior to or during FTE week.)

Since one of Mel’s last acts was to approve the transfer of over 100 students back to public school, most of whom were not ready to return, these students are now bouncing back to Prospect. These returning students are very upset to be back at Prospect especially since “Mr. Mel” told them they were ready to leave. Moreover this great influx of students in the first quarter has been very difficult for me and my staff to manage.

In the first quarter, I did not approve any child’s return to public school. Given the stigma associated with Prospect students, I wanted to be sure any child who returned would be able to cope, succeed and flourish. Henry has expressed a sentiment shared by many of his public school peers: a child who is transferred to Prospect needs to stay at least an entire school year. The students who have left Prospect this year either moved out of the county, were being homeschooled or took advantage of the loophole that allows parents to reenroll their child in public school without any administrator’s approval.

Any Prospect student who is not a “felony transfer” or was not expelled from public school, is considered a “voluntary placement.” Principals typically tell parents “Your child is heading toward an expulsion. We should transfer him now to Prospect to avoid having an expulsion on his record.” Most parents don’t know this means they can remove their child from Prospect at anytime, but some do and have been known to transfer their child against Prospect’s recommendation. Most of the children who leave Prospect for homeschooling or by the “voluntary loophole” ultimately return. Prospect parents typically don’t have the skills, academically or emotionally, to homeschool their children. Those children who return to public school with all their anti-social skills still in evidence, are quickly suspended or returned to Prospect. When Prospect parents go to reenroll their child in public school, the principal often phones to ask me whether I recommend this particular student return. When I say no, we both know it is but a matter of time before the child is back at Prospect. This revolving door doesn’t benefit anyone - not the students, not my staff and not the public school teachers, deans and principals. Henry and I often talk about how to close this loophole. So far we have many ideas but nothing Henry feels he can bring before the School Board.

My discussions with Henry over the first quarter have made me conscious of a fissure in our relationship. Like an itch just out of reach in the small of my back, I am dimly aware, but ignore it thinking it will go away. With so many challenges, I want to maintain the Henry harmony and thus I tend to glaze over problems. But as we talk it is clear that Henry is more interested in quickly and smoothly transferring troubled students to Prospect than in preventing children from being bounced between schools. It also seems he is not nearly as concerned as I am about the less than equivalent education children receive at the alternative schools. After just a few months at Prospect, my views on education policy and educating “on the ground” are shifting and coalescing.

As a former teacher, I am sympathetic to teachers who need to remove violent and disruptive students from their classrooms. I also know that many alternative school employees and proponents believe that “at-risk” children need a different atmosphere in which to learn, i.e. strict, structured classrooms, low teacher-pupil ratios, engaging, intensive, relevant lessons and counseling for those in need. What I am most acutely aware of now is that the money and resources don’t follow the need. So what do you do when you go to work in the morning and see hundreds of the most needy children who aren’t learning, who aren’t getting an equal education?

I am starting to seriously doubt the wisdom of putting all these poor, troubled students together in a school with fewer resources than the public schools. The public schools might be benefiting from this arrangement, but are my students? This creates some personal dilemmas: if moving children from public school to Prospect isn’t the best answer, should I work, as Mel did, to move more students back in public school? If this system is wrong and has to change and I am part of this system, am I part of the problem? John Dewey’s once said, “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all its children.” I’m starting to worry that the Herald County public school system may not want to provide the same quality of education for all the children of Herald County.

On the other hand, I rationalize that whether I’m here or not, the children would still be here. And, I firmly believe that before I came these children were not getting the same level of education and rehabilitation that we are now providing. And I can be a voice for these disenfranchised kids. I can to fight to get more resources for them. I have to help the Herald County School Board and community see that marginalizing and segregating these children is not only wrong, but will haunt the community in the future. These children will grow up and if we don’t counsel and educate them now, they will, at best, become a financial burden on the taxpayers of Herald County and, at worst, will victimize the community with their criminal behavior.

But at the end of the first academic quarter, I find I am not speaking for the children. I am struggling just to keep pace with the influx of students, with hiring good teachers and with running the school. I still believe Prospect will work if I could just get organized, hire the right people and get enough grant money. I can’t afford to let my doubts take over. I jumped into this job with both feet. My husband and I are building a home here and putting down roots. I can’t accept that Prospect won’t work – that I can’t make it work.