First Class

by Alison Stewart

  “You think you’re going to make it? You’re cutting classes, and your grades are ridiculous,” Leonard replied, displaying his edgy forthrightness. “ ‘So, you think ‘I’m not going to make it’ because of that? Wow. Yes. You think you are?”

  “I’m going to make it,” the kid said. “I don’t care what you say.”

  “Wow, that’s the best thing you’ve said all day”

  “Don’t tell me I’m not going to make it.” The student became sullen and withdrawn again. And then he looked up. “So, you think something’s wrong with me?”

  “No, it’s probably with everybody else but you.” Leonard wasn’t there to make him feel better about breaking the rules.

  “I wanted to make sure before he left here, that he knew it’s not OK for you to be the way you are, because he doesn’t want to be judged. ‘Don’t judge me. Let the bell ring, you know, you’re out of my life,’ ” he said, voicing the student’s inner monologue. “ ‘But I want to feel comfortable with being messed up.’ And I wouldn’t allow that, because I’m going to challenge him until I couldn’t. And when he got up, I said, ‘All right, so I’ll see you later,’ and he just kept walking. You know, ‘I’m not saying good-bye to you.’ But, what’s my follow-up? It doesn’t end there. He thinks it ends there. Because when you turn around, he’s not going to see me. I don’t disappear. But in his mind, I disappear for life. We called his parents. We’re having a conference with his mother and him, and I’m going to stay in his face until he realizes that you’re going to do it the way we say, or you may not be a Dunbar student then. Their final exchange brought the light.”

  Leonard continued, “He said, ‘I already get kicked out of a school already because I curse people out.’ ”

  “So, you’ve learned from your mistakes.”

  “ ‘I haven’t learned from my mistakes.’ ”

  “Well, you haven’t cursed yet in here. That’s called growth.”

  Leonard concluded, “So, he’s quiet again. Because he doesn’t want to hear what makes sense. But it’s up to us as educators, and as the right people, as the right adult, to turn that boy’s life around. Whether we win or lose, we have to make the attempt. That’s what was missing in DC with most of the adults who were teaching in these schools.”

  The other thing that was missing, in Leonard’s opinion, was an open conversation about mental health issues.

  So you have to—because you know that it doesn’t always start with a shining star. You know? The diamond in the rough. And you have a lot of those students here that can really rise to the occasion. And that’s why we feel it’s important to have a mental health component attached to our school, because of what they suffer when they’re children—because a lot of them need therapy that they never receive, and that can be a factor as to why they’re not learning well. So, and we want to bring that in here. We want it really intense though—we want it to be like a mental health unit here, where practitioners can really meet their needs. But that’s going to take, you know, major dollars. But we feel that’s the future. With mental health attached on one side, and dorm on the other for kids who can’t go home.

  In the first year with Friends of Bedford, 48 percent of the teachers were replaced. The number would grow to 60 percent. “They lacked necessary tools that you need to offer instruction to this population.” Leonard clarified what he meant: “[With] students of this competency, which is mainly elementary school, you need a teacher that is able to be patient enough to know that you have to teach them where they are and then bring them up, not try to have a standard that they can’t meet, so that you end up failing 80 percent of the class. So if you’re failing 80 percent of the class consistently, and you’re waiting for something to happen so that can turn around, you’ll just continue to fail them. So [with] teachers that weren’t clear on how to properly educate children who have a scholastic profile that’s similar to fourth or fifth grade, then a better school— or a different school—would probably be best for them.” Some people and programs had to go for budgetary reasons, including the Dunbar High School Band, the same one that performed in the inauguration. It no longer existed, although the school had to clamp down on some grifters who were going door to door in the neighborhood claiming to be students raising money for new band uniforms for the nonexistent Crimson Tide group.

  Leonard noted there were teachers who were effective and invested but they simply did not have the support they needed to succeed. As Leonard continued to expound on his philosophy, in walked a very focused man. He was high energy and tightly wound, with the build of a bantamweight boxer. When Leonard motioned to him to come join the conversation, the man waved it off. With some force Leonard gestured again for the man to come over, and he finally did.

  “I don’t have time for this now. I need to be in the halls.”

  “Come on, it’s for a good cause. She’s writing a book about Dunbar.”

  “Maybe later, maybe later.” The man bounded out of the room and began to walk the halls of the schools. He could be heard saying, “I do not want to see you in my halls!” Stephen Jackson was the new principal of Dunbar High School, chosen by the Friends of Bedford.

  Principal Jackson slowed down for a few minutes at the end of the day to answer some questions. Even when he was sitting still, he gave the impression that he was on the move.

  “In order to be a principal, especially at an urban high school, you should not be in your office, because you cannot run a building from your office. You run a building from being in the hallways, being in classrooms, being in the cafeteria. Making sure that the building is being run properly. You cannot see anything by being in the office. Rarely do I have meetings in my office during the day. And that is only because that in order to turn schools around, the principal must be visible. The principal must greet the students in the morning. They must see them off in the afternoon. They must talk to them during the day. We have about nine hundred students here, and I practically know the name of every last one of them.”

  Jackson is all business when he talks about Dunbar. “My biggest challenge is that the school did not have systems, structures, policies, and procedures. In addition to that, you really didn’t have a lot of experienced people. So, therefore, you know, we are now putting in systems, structures, policies, and procedures to help organize the school. And generally when the school is out of control, it’s out of control because you don’t have those systems in place or you may not have strong leadership.”

  A former chemistry teacher, Stephen Jackson had been principal at two other large high schools, one in Brooklyn and most recently one in Mount Vernon, New York. The current mayor of Mount Vernon described the city’s diversity like this: “We have priests, and we have hoodlums.”6 Mount Vernon High School is bigger than Dunbar—nearly twenty-two hundred students. It went through spasms of violence that were regularly featured on the evening news. Jackson’s task was huge, but he broke it down to the basics: establish systems and introduce uniforms and smaller learning communities. Each met with varying levels of success.

  But most importantly, Jackson got to know the students. “So, every school I generally went to turn around I noticed that there are similar challenges. And those challenges are that they don’t have usually strong leadership. But more importantly, they don’t even have the structures, the systems, the procedures, the policies that are in place, and basically that’s what we were able to do.” In his personal statement distributed to the alumni, he refers to himself as a “change agent in the urban educational settings.”

  “When I visited the school,” Jackson said of his first time at Dunbar, “they were, number one, dressed inappropriately. You know, some of the young ladies dressed in very revealing clothes. In addition, the young men were all over the place. I mean I didn’t see much adult supervision. I walked by classes with students just hanging out with no teachers, and anytime you have a situation where there’s no real adult supervision, then you’re going
to have chaos. So, it was very chaotic. But the one thing I know about children is that they love and respect structure. And because we came with structure—like I said, in the beginning they were resistant, but because we came with structure, they begin to respect what we did, but more important, we were very consistent. And the first thing for me, in terms of the consistency, is making sure they were in class and making sure that they wore uniforms. And for me, for most of our children, that is one of the first things about being in education that gives them some structure. Being in class and more important, wearing the uniforms, because that to me is important for structure. Because some of them don’t have the structure in their homes.”

  And he is true to his word. In a firm but gentle manner, he let one young woman know she had to go home and come back in the standard polo shirt in the school’s colors, and pants or a long skirt. And when she said, very sweetly, looking up at him, “But Mr. Jackson …” he made it clear that just looking cute was not going to work. The kids respond to Jackson, and he clearly enjoys being with them. He jokes with them. Sometimes he speaks like them, which might make a very traditional teacher cringe. He is firm and clear and respectful. He has provided structure, and the kids seem to respond. Tough love isn’t just a cliché in his world.

  An informal poll of some students in the library revealed they didn’t mind the uniforms, especially two freshmen. One girl, though, did not like the crackdown on cell phones at all. Her reasoning: “I need my phone.”

  Jackson had very specific goals and a strong sense of ownership about Dunbar’s future. And he seemed to be his own man. So why would someone who had run such big programs come to work for someone else in a district far from home? Jackson said it was personal. He had gone to Howard and frequently stressed his ties to DC.

  The principal had also spoken at the alumni luncheon back in October and was clear he wanted to be considered part of and work with the community, saying:

  I’m honored to be at Paul Laurence Dunbar Senior High School for several reasons. Number one, not only is it a historical black institution, but many of my family members graduated from Dunbar. My grandfather’s oldest brother graduated in the late 1920s. My aunt graduated—my great aunt, which is my grandfather’s youngest sister—graduated in 1934, in the class of 1934, and then I had a host of uncles and cousins who also graduated. In fact, some of you may even know my great uncle who was a boxer here, in DC, Billy Banks. That’s my uncle, my great uncle…. I spoke to Aunt Ada yesterday. We had a long conversation, and we talked about the importance of restoring Paul Laurence Dunbar. Most of my family is from DC. My mother was born here, and when Mr. Leonard contacted me in New York to come down here—I already turned around two schools in New York, and to be honest with you, when they asked me about turning around a third, if it were not Paul Laurence Dunbar, I would have turned them down. But because of what the school represents to me personally, I am here. We are working together. It’s a tremendous amount of work, but I’m sure all of you were hearing some of the good things that we are doing at this particular school. I love this school. I love the work that many of you have done over the years, and I guarantee you, you give us a few years, not only will it be one of the best schools in DC, it will be one of the best schools in the United States of America.

  Leonard and Jackson had a history. Jackson has said that, when he was a young educator, Leonard had mentored him along the course of his twenty-year career in New York.7 He describes them now as colleagues, even though technically the Friends of Bedford hired Jackson. “They’re managing the school,” he said, clarifying their roles. “George Leonard and the Friends at Bedford, they manage two schools: Coolidge and Dunbar. Basically they sit down with me, and we collaborate, all right? I’m known for turning schools around, OK? They brought me down to help them turn the school around. So, we collaborate about what should be done, you know, how it should be done. Sometimes we agree, sometimes there may be disagreements, but that’s fine, you know. The bottom line is that we work as a team to ensure that students get what they need in order to have a full high school experience. But more important, we focus on education more so than anything else.”

  At the end of Dunbar’s first year under the stewardship of the Friends of Bedford and the hands-on management of Principal Jackson, it was time to breathe. There had been so many changes: the restructuring, a slew of teachers shown the door, new faces in the classrooms, and a new code of conduct. By June 6, there was a need for a pure celebration of the students and their achievements: the school’s commencement. The event was held at Cramton Auditorium on the campus of Howard University. Being on Howard’s campus gave the event a certain gravitas and an aspirational undertone. It seemed fitting considering the expectation that Dunbar’s academic spirit could be revived.

  Cramton Auditorium had been designed by M Street graduate Hilyard Robinson, and it was known for its unobstructed views of the stage. A news crew was set up in the back of the auditorium to cover the event, not really there to document the graduation but rather to get some video for the evening news. On stage at this commencement would be Mayor Adrian Fenty and his challenger in the 2010 race, City Council Chairman Vince Gray.

  The tension on the stage was thick and dark, in stark contrast to the humidity-free, gloriously sunny June day. The nice weather was a huge relief from the winter of 2010. DC had pulled through a series of huge snowstorms. In the first week of February alone, DC had seen thirty-three inches of snow.

  The future of Dunbar High School may have been forever altered by all that precipitation, which residents called Snowmaggedon. Mass transit stopped. School was canceled for a week. Mayor Fenty’s seeming incompetence became a national sport as jokes abounded and the $100-million-a-day government shutdown became part of the American conversation. DC insider and shoot-from-the-lip MSNBC host Chris Matthews fired off his complaints on national TV: “We’ve got a very sophisticated mayor this time; everybody liked him for a while. And I’m telling you, it’s time for a competition in the next primary ‘round here. I think somebody’s gotta run. This city needs a little better effort right now. I’d like to see some action.”

  Matthews was prescient. Mayor Adrian Fenty’s reaction to Snow-maggedon 2010 was a fail. The drumbeat that “Fenty must go” began, but the anger about the cleanup was just an offshoot of a deeper discontent with what some considered his aloof governing style, and very specifically, his choice for the schools chancellor, Michelle Rhee.

  After two and a half years as chancellor, if you said “Michelle Rhee” in a conversation in DC, it would be like saying, “I don’t vaccinate my kids” or “I just got a new Hummer—it matches my other one.” People would decide who you were and what you believed in right then and there. By that time, Rhee had fired hundreds of teachers, closed twenty-four schools, and pissed off the teachers unions—stepping on toes and earning accolades. Many admired her kids-first mantra and weed-whacker approach to bureaucracy. Jay Matthews of the Washington Post was an early adopter on Rhee and the Friends of Bedford. He summed up Rhee’s appeal this way:

  She is putting in charge of these schools the best principals and energetic principals she can find, ones who stay in teaching, and giving them the power to hire their own team of teachers and giving them the power to fire those teachers pretty quickly who don’t work out. And then empowering them to run their schools in ways that make sense to them and their team. And as part of that, to make that work, she got the foundations to promise her a lot of money so she could pay these people more and have a better chance of keeping these very bright and energetic people long term [than] if they were being paid enough … you know, to satisfy their moms.8

  Referring to the slew of young Teach for America recruits, he said:

  That’s what she’s tried to do. And it’s hit all kinds of bumps. Although she’s been in the job longer than I thought she was going to be. I thought this is going to flame out much sooner. I didn’t appreciate how much the politics and feel
ings in the city were in her favor. I didn’t realize how deep was the outrage and depression at the state of the schools.

  While her message of improving the schools and putting kids first couldn’t be argued with, the way she went about it was another thing. One of Rhee’s critics along the way was Councilman Gray. Gray was nonplussed when it came to light that the chancellor had rearranged some difficult school budget cuts previously approved by the city council. Rather than cut money from a summer school program, Rhee chose to find $9 million in part by firing 266 teachers in the fall of 2009.

  When Rhee appeared before the city council a month later, it looked like one of those congressional hearings where some bank CEO or military officer has been summoned to the table to answer questions and be publicly scolded. Neither Rhee nor Gray backed down. The exchange was recorded and still lives on YouTube.

  GRAY: Why didn’t you tell this council that you chose to do something else? Do you think that’s inconsequential to say, “I’m not going to do summer school, I’m just going to fire a bunch of people that will add up to 9.1 million dollars.” You think that’s OK?

  RHEE: I think that in times when you are making difficult decisions, that things don’t always happen in an ideal manner. Just as, let me just give you an example here, when you cut our budget by $21 million, you did not call me to ask me if it was OK to cut summer school—

  GRAY: We don’t have to—

  RHEE: Now hang on a second, wait a second. And the thing is, I don’t actually blame you for that because you were under a tremendous amount of pressure. You were under a time constraint. I understand that you had to make those budget concessions.

  GRAY: First of all, this was a public process at which a vote was taken, and it became the law of the District of Columbia. Why did you choose not to follow with the law?