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Youth Empowerment Center News

Charter school status is sought for Gompers, Keiller
By Helen Gao

NELVIN CEPEDA / Union-Tribune - January 1, 2005 Community volunteer Edith Smith (left) recently asked parent Laura Williams to sign a petition to convert Gompers Middle School in San Diego's Chollas View neighborhood into a charter school.

Bands of parents and teachers are walking door-to-door in southeastern San Diego circulating petitions in hopes of transforming two failing neighborhood schools into high-achieving charter schools.

They have worked through the holidays, straining to meet a Monday deadline when they must turn in signatures from at least 50 percent of the parents of students who attend Gompers and Keiller middle schools.

The dreams are ambitious. These parents and teachers see these schools becoming models of excellence that will send future generations of inner-city youth to colleges, as The Preuss School at the University of California San Diego is doing.

Gompers in Chollas View and Keiller in Jamacha are in the early stages of forming partnerships with UCSD and the University of San Diego, respectively.

The universities are committed to urban education reform. UCSD originally had considered locating the Preuss School in southeastern San Diego. The principal of Keiller graduated from an educational leadership program at USD, which also has a program for new teachers.

Charter schools are public schools that generally operate independently of the local district, though the district must authorize their education plans. They are exempt from many regulations and union contract stipulations, including a rule that favors seniority over merit in filling teaching jobs.

Keiller and Gompers are among eight schools in the San Diego Unified School District that are under pressure from the federal No Child Left Behind law to restructure because of chronic underachievement. King Elementary plans to reopen as a charter next fall, while Memorial Charter will revamp its charter. The others are working with the district on restructuring plans.

As charters, Keiller and Gompers will extend their school year and school day. Their educational program will include a strong arts education component and possibly some all-boys or all-girls classes to reduce distraction.

Controversial reforms in the district have focused heavily on literacy at the expense of arts and other enrichment activities, critics have said. While credited with raising scores in elementary schools, the reforms have not worked in higher grades.

Keiller's and Gompers' charter applications propose changing the school environment, beginning with greeting students with classical music when they arrive and adopting "The Greatest Love of All" as the school song. They envision inviting areas for students to congregate before school, perhaps to read the newspaper and sip hot chocolate. Educators at the schools say ambience is important to learning.

Going door-to-door
On a recent weekday, parents met at Gompers and broke into teams to canvass streets. They were joined by teachers, their principal and some Keiller parents.
Denise DeVall, a Keiller parent, said she is willing to take a chance on going charter because she feels district leaders have failed her school.

"They haven't been paying attention to us 'til now. We need to do something to turn around our children's achievement," DeVall said.

Patricia Ladd, Keiller's principal, said if Keiller excels, the community will rise with it. She dreams of producing leaders to revitalize the neighborhood.

Southeastern San Diego is a poor area where a majority of the students at Keiller and Gompers receive free or reduced-price meals. These students typically do not perform as well as their wealthier counterparts.

But Gompers was once top-caliber. In the 1980s, students at its now-defunct computer, science and math magnet program won national honors. The program served mostly white students bused from outside for racial integration, while students from the neighborhood attended regular classes on the same campus.

In 1989, the magnet program was altered to include all students who attended Gompers. Angry teachers and magnet parents fled Gompers in droves.

The school spiraled downward.

The apartments, homes, liquor stores and the trolley station near Gompers and Keiller make news because of drive-by shootings and gang violence.

As the Gompers team recently made its way down 47th Street and around the corner of Logan Avenue and 49th Street, it passed well-maintained homes and apartments, some with bars over the windows or security guards outside. Some apartments were scenes of recent shootings where youngsters died.

The team members studied spreadsheets with students' names and addresses. One carried a sign reading, "Support your children's future."

Michelle Evans, a mother of two Gompers students, led the way, stopping every potential parent to inquire whether they have children in middle school.

Evans' sixth-grade son, Keith, who carried the sign, now attends Pershing Middle School in San Carlos. He is not the exception. Parent after parent told the Gompers team that their children attend schools elsewhere.

"Most of our kids get up at 5 a.m. to get on buses at 6:30 a.m. for a good education when they should be able to get a good education in the community," Evans said.

At Harbor View Villas, several parents cited school safety, not academics, as their top concern. They said their children feared gangs and harassment on the way to and from school but Gompers' school grounds are generally described as safe.

Herman Lavender, a father of six, said he sends his stepson to Mission Bay High School for safety reasons. He gets up before dawn to make the bus. "It's a fight," said Lavender, himself a Gompers graduate.

Vince Riveroll, Gompers' principal, said improving the safety of the community is not something within his control, but he intends to work with the San Diego Police Department to reduce violence.

An extended school day, he said, would allow parents to pick up their children after work. He hopes high achievement will inspire community pride that will translate into reduced gang violence.

"Gompers has a negative connotation," Riveroll said, because of problems in the neighborhood. "It's a big challenge to change the image of the school."

What UCSD, USD offer
If UCSD partners with Gompers, it will train teachers in practices developed at Preuss and provide tutors and mentors for students who will have access to its resources and campus.
Leading the Gompers effort are two men who helped found Preuss: UCSD provost Cecil Lytle and Hugh "Bud" Mehan, director of the UCSD Center for Research on Educational Equity, Assessment, and Teaching Excellence.

In a tentative arrangement, Gompers would hold the charter, and UCSD would provide support and eventually assume management of the school.

Mehan stressed that the discussions are "very preliminary." There is no guarantee that if the parents get all the signatures they need, the board of education would approve the charter.

USD has similar plans to provide Keiller with extra support, including counselor interns.

Having worked her entire educational career until now in more affluent schools north of Interstate 8, Ladd, Keiller's principal, knows how much USD can offer Keiller.

"The disparities (of resources) are real," she said, citing the relative stability of teachers at affluent and high performing schools. "It's more difficult to meet the challenge of an inner-city child than north of 8."

Unanswered questions
Newly elected school board member Shelia Jackson, who represents southeastern San Diego, is asking pointed questions about the charter efforts.
If Keiller and Gompers become charter schools, where will children whose parents object to the schools' philosophy or management go? Will enough UCSD professors and college students come from La Jolla to help?

Preuss, she said, is a success in part because it's on the university campus. It's also different, she said, because it started with one grade level and added a new one every year so it could nurture each class of students. At Gompers, the charter would start with 1,000 mostly struggling students in seventh through ninth grades.

Jackson also worries that Gompers parents have unrealistic expectations of what a UCSD partnership can achieve.

"It's like they are looking at this Christmas present and saying, 'Wow! this is what I want for Christmas!' but they don't realize all the work that goes into this present," she said.

Some Gompers parents fear Jackson's skepticism is undermining their effort. Jackson counters that she's watching out for the interests of the children to ensure the charter schools will work. Nationwide, studies have shown charter schools have had mixed results.

Marc Santos, co-chair of the Lincoln/Gompers Redevelopment Committee, however, has seen first hand what charters can achieve. His daughter attends High Tech High, another acclaimed charter school.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance," said Santos about the UCSD partnership. "It's our shot to do something for the children and improve their prospects and the future of the community they will live in as adults."

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Helen Gao: (619) 718-5181; helen.gao@uniontrib.com

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