A principal in a paradox
Budget cuts threaten to undermine a success story
The first time Kelli Sorich walked into a school as a teacher, she remembers thinking, “Whoa, where am I?” It was dirty and dangerous. Students wore gang colors and had chains hanging from their pants – which needed no more help to sag. Outside, during recess and lunch, there were fights; inside, bookshelves were knocked over, even in the main office. “Honestly, I had no intention of staying. I thought I’d get a year or two of experience and go somewhere else,” she recalls. Sorich was at Dorsa Elementary School; that’s right, an elementary school, in San Jose’s Alum Rock Union Elementary School District.
That was seven years ago, and Sorich is still at Dorsa, but the Dorsa of today has nothing in common with the one where she spent her novice year, except for the level of poverty – 100% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. The transformation began when Norma Rodriguez took over as principal in 2004. She found enough bits and pockets of money to bring in a literacy coach, who modeled lessons and showed teachers how to use data to inform their work. She brought in substitutes every six weeks to give teachers a full day to collaborate by grade level and plan their next unit, and started after-school and Saturday programs for students who needed more help. Test scores soared. Dorsa’s Academic Performance Index (API) jumped from 592, the second lowest in the district, to 730. She even restored the playground to a safe place for fun and games.
Principal Norma Rodriguez, Dorsa Elementary
In short, Norma Rodriguez accomplished what politicians from local school boards to presidents have demanded; she turned around a failing school. Her superintendent called her an inspiration, the Association of California School Administrators named her its 2009 California Elementary Principal of the Year, and the National Association of Elementary School Principals honored her as a 2010 National Distinguished Principal. Today, less than a year later, Rodriguez is trying to figure out how to forestall the collapse of Dorsa’s accomplishments.
“I have not even seen my school budget, but I am told that it’s not going to be pretty, to prepare for the worst,” Rodriguez told me earlier this month during a visit to Dorsa. Sitting at a table in her small, inviting office, she points to a budget forecast from the district office. This year, Alum Rock’s budget is about $115 million. According to the chart in front of Rodriguez, the district could lose $13 million in revenue over the next two years.
There’s already nothing left to lose, says Rodriguez with a numb laugh. “Since January, I’ve only had $18 left, and so we are running our school with donations… to pay for paper, to pay for supplies that we need.” For a moment, she can’t speak; her eyes well up and her nose turns red. Then her voice rises a bit as she ticks off everything that will be lost: the parent liaison, the literacy coach, the playground program that teaches leadership skills along with sports, the substitutes to release teachers for collaborative work, seven teachers, Saturday and after-school intervention programs. In addition, there’s the possibility of class size reduction. “The worst is no resources,” says Rodriguez. “The worst is just having, hopefully, teachers in the classroom, that’s that.”
Dorsa Elementary School literacy coach Kelli Sorich works with first grade teacher Desiree Satarr.
Already this year Dorsa has lost its substitutes. So Rodriguez and Sorich, her literacy coach, take turns, with one coaching the teachers and the other subbing for entire grades, working with up to 100 students at a time in the cafeteria while their teachers get a much reduced two hours to collaborate. Next year, when there’s no money for a literacy coach and Sorich is back as a classroom teacher, even that time may be gone.
“And so, it is just, one wonders, seven years of real true commitment to transform an organization in spite of all the barriers of the students that come to us.” Rodriguez swallows hard and continues, “All of that work and commitment is going to go down the drain because it is not humanly possible to keep it up.”
Yet, if many politicians have their way, Rodriguez and every other principal and teacher will be held accountable for their students’ progress. The slide has already begun at Dorsa. Last year, after the school lost its academic intervention programs and cut short its collaborative planning time, its API fell by eight points. “Last year was the first year we did not have those monies and our scores went down,” noted Rodriguez.
A few days later, she was in Sacramento lobbying lawmakers to put Governor Brown’s tax extension on the ballot to prevent the worst-case scenario from hitting schools. Her group visited only the offices of Democrats, and even then they only got to meet with staff members.
Parent volunteers say they can already sense that something is up. Maria Lopez is one of 60 parents who regularly help out at Dorsa. She has two children at the school, and says it seems like teachers have less time to prepare. Lopez says she’s also noticed little things; for instance, she doesn’t do as much photocopying as she used to because there’s not enough paper. Lopez says her children know that cuts are coming, but don’t really understand what that means.
On the playground we pass fifth grader Sammy Ramos. He’s been trained this year as a junior coach through the Playworks program, a nonprofit organization that Rodriguez brought in to create a structured physical education program during recess. As a junior coach, Sammy gets to teach and lead games and says it’s an “awesome experience” that he hopes will help him mature and become a better person. “Would kids fight if this program didn’t exist,” I ask. “Well, yeah,” he says definitively, giving me that “duh” look. What Sammy doesn’t know is that he’s in the last group of junior coaches; there isn’t enough money to keep Playworks going next year.
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Moving story. But can the school’s budget stated of $113 million be right? Seems way too high to me with 560 students??
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$115 million is the budget for the entire district.
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These stories are compelling without the hyperbolic recounting of dread east San Jose. Seven years ago, I also taught in Alum Rock Elementary USD. None of the schools were overloaded with gang-color-wearing 5th graders. This imagery denigrates the hard-working families that live in Alum Rock.
The poverty and the condition of the school buildings in that District should provide ample color without such offensive imagery.
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Thanks Ms. Baron, and John, for providing a glimpse into this school community, its outstanding principal and staff, and more importantly the highs and lows they have lived over the past several years, sadly with more lows head their way. This article provides faces, names, and real vignettes that give life to the tragedies occurring across this country. We need more news such as this so Santa Clarans, Californians, and citizens across this country of ours, hear about the harsh reality that exists in low-income school districts such as this. And the fact that these districts tend to suffer disproportionately from financial woes as opposed to more privileged school districts where cutbacks are supplanted by private donations and other community support.
Children, teachers, staff, and administrators in low-income districts are not mere statistics in our data intensive world. Their aspirations, hopes, and futures rest on society fulfilling its obligation to provide an equal educational opportunity, for all people, but especially those of the greatest need. Journalists from the mainstream media, perhaps spurred on by articles like this, need to invest more time researching what happens in, and to, schools in low-income communities. This is needed to ensure our elected representatives, and the voting public, recognize that many are truly suffering, such as the students attending Dorsa Elementary School, in spite of the heroic efforts of a dedicated and caring principal, teaching staff, and community.
America has always prided itself in caring for those who are in the greatest need. However, over the past few decades, we seem to have been blindly pursuing self-interests and our own American Dreams which has created an ever-widening gap between the haves and have-nots. Hopefully, through dedicated journalists, bloggers, and contributing authors such as Ms. Baron, more people will see the inequities in our educational system that are exacerbated in financially trying times, and do something about it such as vote for the tax extension Governor Brown is seeking. Without the necessary finances needed to support principals such as Ms. Rodriguez, all of the efforts invested to turn around a failing school will be for naught. And that is just not right.
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This principal supported teachers in one of the “best practices” we have come to know, yet we also know it is not sustainable. Our schools, systems, and markets have to innovate enough to keep the most effective part of these practices. Teachers need resources: standards alignments between adopted materials and state standards (or whichever set you choose to commit to); year plans that lay out that curriculum for an imaginary class but is modifiable by the teacher; benchmark assessments with accompanying blueprints; resources to assess students during short cycles that are not all multiple choice and ways to collect and analyze that data in a standards-based way rather than averaging grades over time. Teachers need services: once those assessments are complete, there should be a way to report BY STUDENT how each student is performing to goal, which standard(s) they have not mastered, what they might misunderstand, what instructional strategies/resources can support them, and their trajectory for being on track for that set of standards for the year. For the students who HAVE learned the standards, there should be ready resources to extend, apply, and deepen that initial learning and/or support the student in following areas of personal interest. Then if some sets of learning tasks were available for students, that would be the icing on the cake. Then teachers STILL need to be able to gather for the REAL WORK, Given the resources and services, they can spend time talking about HOW to support student learning, deepen their own content knowledge, and…you get the picture. Finally, school needs to be structured in a way that allows teachers to do this. No matter how good a sub is, a day with a sub is a less-than-optimal day in a good teacher’s classroom.
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Jennifer, Perhaps my experiences are different than yours. I began working in Alum Rock in 2001, and yes, my students often wore gang colors and chains on their pants. I had some pretty eye-opening conversations about gangs in the neighborhood with them. My accounts describe a school which was once an unsafe place, without a dress-code. and an unsecured campus. The theme of my comments is one of transition and resilience through solid leadership, along with commitment to the students and community. I am proud to still be working alongside the hard working families in Alum Rock.
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I could not agree with you more! I feel I had this same conversation with many others but no one is listening.
Time and people are our greatest resources. We have six hours of instruction each of the 184 days in one academic year. At Dorsa have tried to developed a Professsional Learning Community. We have implemented the RtI model, leveled our students based on need and meet two hours a week to analyze student data and plan instruction. We work as a team and take ownership and collective responsibility of all of our students’ growth. In jsut the last two months, 25 students have moved our of our school and 18 new students, including four from Charters have enrolled in our school.
No one ever goes to war unprepared. In order to win this war, our teachers must have enough time to prepare standards-based lessons, be prepared to differentiate for all of their students’ diverse needs, develop individualized catch-up plans and plan enrichment opportunities. Not to mention the development of assessments to monitor students’ learning and meeting as grade levels to engage in cycles of inquiry and based on student data make new plans. Two hours to do all this is not enough.
six hours x 5 days = 30 hours of fragmented instruction
What would happen if we extended the instructional day to 8 hours instead of six so our teachers could have one entire day to plan every week?
What would happen if our teachers came to school the entire month of August to develop a backwards map/standards-based plan for the entire year including asssessments and benchmarks? Instead, their calendar begins two days before students arrive to our doors. Are two days enough to prepare? Out of those two days we can only have two hours for staff development. Are two hours enough to prepare? To engage in team building activities, and plan for the entire year? We cannot and will not win this war if we keep the same system.
Are Charter Schools the answer? They are doing all these things we want to do and seem to be having success. If this is the answer, then let’s all become charters. But… I keep wondering…why are so many failing students coming back to traditional public schools?
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