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THE HAMMER
Cindy Goodsell
Bryan Adams High School
When principal Cindy Goodsell walked through the doors at Bryan Adams High School northeast of White Rock Lake two years ago, it was a different world from Lamar Middle School in Irving, the Blue Ribbon school she’d left. In fact, Bryan Adams looked like something out of one of those schmaltzy inspirational movies about an anarchic inner-city school getting a new principal. But this was real.
“I’d never seen such chaos. We were about to be named the most dangerous school in the state,” she says. “Gangs. Three hundred tardies every period. Students cursing teachers. Teachers coming in late and leaving early. Students sleeping in class. Admin offices so spread out, no one knew what anyone was doing or if they were doing anything at all.”
So she imposed order. She reorganized the administration and centralized it. She imposed strict rules for teachers and made vice principals accountable for discipline and classroom walkthroughs. She cut the schedule from eight periods to seven to reduce downtime.
If students get done early with work or a test in class, they have to be reading. Doesn’t matter what: newspapers, magazines, even graphic novels are okay.
“It’s instruction bell to bell,” she says.
The district gave her $50,000 to update the library, and she ordered scads of young adult literature, graphic novels, and like materials. The goal was to get them reading; the subject matter or format was secondary. She also installed a hot chocolate and cappuccino machine, and bought furniture to create a reading plaza outside the library on a deck. Hey, it works for Starbucks.
“I was booed at first. Bought [a cheaper car] because I knew it would get vandalized,” she says. “Then it started dawning on them what we were doing, and they started backing us.”
One example? The facility was a shambles. It was dirty, broken, and unpleasing. She harangued DISD for more money. “I told [the district], “If you have a ghetto school, you’re going to get ghetto kids.’ Raise expectations and they start responding.”
The restrooms and cafeteria were redone. Then she took every class to show them the facilities before they were opened. She warned them that if they got trashed, they’d be closed. Some of the students had never seen anything like a nice, hotel-style public restroom. By the end of the semester, some of the gang leaders started policing the bathrooms to make sure they stayed nice.
So she’s brought order and she’s fixed the facility. Now Goodsell is turning her focus to academics. “The teachers are behind me, and now the students are behind me,” she says. “Now we’re past whether we’re acceptable and we’re focusing on achievement.”
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THE CLOSER
Regina Jones
South Oak Cliff High School
Principal Regina Jones is, much like Oak Cliff itself, quite possibly on the verge of greatness. She’s got at least two of the past problems well in hand, and instead of just treading water or fighting the tide, she’s actually working on pushing ahead. Way ahead.
“My goal is to have this school at such a high academic range, we have a line of parents and students wanting to go here,” Jones says. She’s well aware that Oak Cliff itself is home to a growing and more diverse middle- and upper-class demographic that is looking to transform the southern side of the Trinity into the next Oak Lawn. So for her, it’s all about the academics.
“I want this to be a well-rounded school,” she says. Jones was saddled by the previous principal with a well-publicized grading scandal involving a basketball player. Though the school is still known as a statewide basketball powerhouse, Jones says, “We need to be champions on court and in the classroom.”
Last year, Texas Monthly named South Oak Cliff High School one of the top 100 public schools in Texas. Not bad, given that when Jones took over just two years ago, the school was an academic low performer – rated “unacceptable” by the TEA – and marred by poor facilities, a fragmented faculty, and an understaffed academic team. First thing Jones did was just listen.
“You can’t step in like you’re the savior in a cape. Some of the things were not broken,” she says.
Jones focused on two areas: the staff and the facilities. They didn’t have enough teachers and the campus was rundown. So she brought in more teachers. She repainted, replanted, and redecorated as resources would allow. Then she focused on defining rules and expectations both for teachers and students.
“We talk about goals every day,” she says. “Structure, too. Kids wanted to be recognized for positive and not negative things. Everyone was eager for the change, so it wasn’t as hard as you’d think if you give them the right tools and the right attention.”
She also talks about her kids, the pride they have and how some will be the first in their families to go to college. “These kids always had pride,” she says. “And now they’re grateful, thankful, and in this together.”
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THE LAST LINE
Lucy Hakemack
H. Grady Spruce High School
Lucy Hakemack is a David. Her task is a Goliath. She has a deadline: one year to take Spruce High School and throw off its “academically unacceptable” TEA rating – or it closes. Nine of the 10 kids in her school come from poor families. Twenty percent are in special education classes, where the average in the district is just 12 percent. Some 70 percent are Hispanic, meaning there are language barriers.
So the 12-year veteran, whose parents came from Mexico, will tell you plainly that some days it all seems overwhelming. That’s when she turns to a little faith.
“Doesn’t it say in Joshua 1:9, “Be strong and courageous’?” she asks.
Faith may metaphorically move mountains, but that alone won’t turn a school around. She says what it will take is hope and a hell of a lot of hard work. “You have to work with the kids and build relationships,” she says. “You have to let them know it’s not as hard as they think, and that there is always hope. At Spruce, you’re dealing with kids who are already discouraged, who never heard these things before. This is an impoverished, desperate area. More than any school I’ve been in. There are gangs, crime, discipline problems. It’s doable, but it’s going to take time.”
She pauses a beat. “I get angry about what these kids haven’t had in their lives,” she says.
Before Hakemack took the helm, special education students were given worksheets and otherwise ignored. As for tardies and absences, no one seemed to care at all. Discipline was a joke. A minimum wage job looked like a step up anyway.
Aside from getting a handle on the discipline, Hakemack is focusing intensely on one-on-one meetings with students and parents. She and her crew are putting in punishing hours to change the mindset of kids, showing them the difference sticking it out can make. As for academics, she’s established benchmarking with semester goals, something that barely existed before.
“What drives me is that these kids deserve our best. They haven’t gotten it and they haven’t gotten it at home,” she says. “We have a year to turn it around. This is our year. It’s a new beginning.”
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THE TOUGH TALKER
Rawly Sanchez
W.H. Adamson High School
Adamson High School sits in the heart of Oak Cliff. Four-fifths of its student body is classified as low income. So principal Rawly Sanchez hears a lot of excuses – and not a one fazes him.
“Your dad’s in prison? Me, too,” Sanchez says. “Now what you got? Your sister is pregnant? Yeah, me, too. Now what? Momma left you? Same. Now what you got? Now what? I had to go through it all. Don’t let the tie fool you.” He tells his students, “In spite of that, I never gave up. That’s why I’m not going to give up on them and why I won’t accept failure as an option.”
Adamson High School has long faced the dual challenges of marginal academic performance and high dropout rates. Something like 95 percent of its 1,300 students are Hispanic, which is its own challenge since a high percentage are immigrants or the children of immigrants. But Sanchez made amazing headway against both underperformance and the dropout rate. The school’s overall graduation rate is 60 percent, while the average graduation rate for students for whom English is a second language is close to just 35 percent. Eighty percent of Adamson kids belong to that latter category.
And still Sanchez has maintained Adamson as “academically acceptable” for three of the last four years. He does it by pushing discipline. There are more gangs than there’s room to list. He’s shaken up the academic schedule and put a new emphasis on math and science. He put his teachers on notice: gone are the days of come in and learn what you’ll learn; they’re accountable to the kids and to the taxpayers. Meet performance targets or else. (But he’s more cheerleader than drill sergeant for his teachers.)
He’s using career and tech ed teachers to make those classes more relevant and interesting (think physics applied to cars). And he spends ungodly hours visiting the parents of kids at risk of dropping out. He goes to their homes, their workplaces, and even their churches.
“Graduation starts in the ninth grade,” he says. “Get them there, and they’ll more likely stay.” Freshmen and teachers create small learning communities that assist students all the way through high school. They act as counselors, friends, mentors, and mutual support groups.
“Kids are kids. They all bleed and they all cry,” Sanchez says. “Long as you get to that kid’s heart, you can get to them. You look in the eyes of every single child and let them see there’s hope in you. We stand between them and the opportunity of a lifetime.”
HOW PRINCIPALS ARE HIRED: A SEA CHANGE
Principals are a school system’s quarterbacks. They’re the commanders closest to the action. They have to be able to call an audible. And above all – as with quarterbacks on winning teams – they should earn their position based on their skills.
And yet for decades, that’s not how things worked for principals at DISD. They had to run almost every decision by the administration. They were order-takers. And, even worse, way too many of them got their jobs not based on what they could do or what they knew but rather whom they knew.
That’s all changed. Since Superintendent Michael Hinojosa took over, a new principal selection process has been put in place. Gone are the days of patronage and constant shuffling of principals from campus to campus. “Board members get a chance to really examine who these principals are, but more importantly, the selection process includes high-performing principals, who get a say, and parents,” says Don Williams, co-chair of the Dallas Achieves Commission, which worked with the DISD board and administration to craft new standards for principal appointment. “Imagine, putting parents in there.”
The final decision stays with the DISD superintendent, of course, but Hinojosa takes into account the input of those most vested in a school’s success.
“Now you actually have good principals who left the district years ago in disgust coming back,” Williams says.
