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Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2007 > August > 06
Monday, August 6, 2007
When silence speaks volumes
Let me tell you about Ciara.
I met her in the office of the Dayton public school I visited on today’s first day of classes. By then I had already talked to a school board member, the superintendent, four principals, a dozen students, several teachers and a couple of parents in an effort to gauge some of the challenges facing the school district.
But it turned out I learned more from Ciara than from anyone else today about the really tough challenges facing Dayton schools. And she never said a word to me.
In fact, she never said a word to anyone.
I’d guess she was about 10 years old. An aide brought her into the office while I was waiting for the principal. Ciara smiled in her blue and white school uniform, but crouched a little behind the aide. Her hair was carefully braided with purple and pink balls.
The aide said the girl got off the bus and didn’t know where to go.
“That’s OK, honey. What’s your name?” the attendance lady in the office asked in a soothing tone.
The girl just smiled. The aide shook her head. “That’s the problem,” she said.
The attendance lady tried a couple more times to ask her name. Eventually, the girl gave out a little grunt. Then she made song-like sigh a couple of times. After a while she let out with “woooo” or “nanagh” in response to questions.
“That’s all we could get out of her,” the aide said as she headed back to her post.
The attendance lady tried a couple new strategies. She read to her from the list of kids who were absent. “Is that your name?” she asked each time. The girl nodded yes each time.
A male teacher walked into the room and she crouched behind the attendance lady, who explained the situation to him. The man began to try, too.
“Just tell us what your name starts with,” he said. “What letter?”
The girl pointed to a large “Welcome” banner behind him.
“Is the letter up there? Does your name start with W? Does it start with E?” he tried, hopefully.
She seemed to nod at “E.”
“Is it Erica?” the man asked. “Elaine? Eloise?”
The girl smiled and nodded every time.
Just then, the principal leaned into the office from the hallway and motioned for me to follow. Outside the door, Superintendent Percy Mack also was standing in the hallway. I told him what was going on in the office and he went in.
Later on, Mack saw me in the hallway. “It’s Ciara,” he said. “That was her name.”
Mack said as he spoke to the girl, he tried some of the same strategies the others had to no avail. Finally, he wrote out his own name on paper to try to encourage her to write her name down. She pointed to the “c” in his name. Mack then got the attendance list and read the “c’s” aloud. At the name Ciara she really lit up. That was it, Mack said. Finally they got her to her classroom.
So here were some of the things that came to my mind.
First, it was somewhat shocking see a girl who should probably be in third grade but who could not speak, although I know many Dayton school staff regularly see severely delayed children like this.
Second, it seemed clear that this was a new school for Ciara. Otherwise, it was almost certain that someone — staff or students from last year — would have recognized her and been able to tell others who she was. If she, in fact, was new to the school, a parent probably should have taken her to school on the first day to get her situated, rather than send her on the school bus alone. I couldn’t help but wonder why they didn’t. Ciara certainly did not seem neglected. It appeared she was well cared for. Perhaps the parents need to be at work early? Who knows. Could they have called ahead to ask the school to be on the look out for her?
Third, altogether it took about a half dozen school staff, including the superintendent, more than half and hour to get this girl to the right place. Imagine how much time must be spent this way, solving difficult problems that other schools just don’t see.
It was a relief to hear there was a happy ending for Ciara. It would seem she has a long way to go academically. I hope her schooling experience overall has a happy ending, too.
(NOTE: This is a real story, but I changed the girl’s name.)
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Heat closes school in Dayton Tuesday
A Dayton Public Schools spokeswoman just announced that the district will close Tuesday because the National Weather Service has upgraded a weather advisory to a weather warning for Tuesday.
The weather service says the heat index will exceed 100 Tuesday. And Wednesday and Thursday are forecast to be even worse — heat indexes are expected to be between 105 and 110.
Will school be closed those days?
“We’re taking this one day at a time,” district spokewoman Jill Moberley said.
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Patterson-Kennedy: World’s hottest school?
(Patterson-Kennedy Elementary School sixth grader Jacob Fuller waits for the school day to begin)
OK, maybe Patterson-Kennedy Elementary is not the world’s hottest school, but I’ll nominate it as Dayton’s hottest. At least it was the hottest school I was in today of the eight that I visited.
The original part of the building there is about 100 years old and that is where the heat is really unbearable. I visited Sue Seelig’s special education sauna, I mean classroom, in the southeast corner of the third floor in the old portion of the school just before dismissal at 3:25 p.m. and by the time I walked out of there I looked like I had taken a dip in a pool. I wish I had!
Seeling said her kids got through the day with lots of water breaks and popsicles in the afternoon. Even so, as we talked a boy in her class put his head on the desk and said, “I want to go to sleep.”
Patterson-Kennedy was one of three schools I visited this afternoon. For a report on the schools I visited this morning, go here. For more on my afternoon school tour, hit the “continued” link.
Cleveland Elementary School
At Cleveland, I concentrated on talking to parents about the cuts. They were a combination of worried about the cuts and angry about them.
Raymond Gevedon said his sixth grade son used to go to private school until he couldn’t afford it anymore. Then he tried a charter school last year before switching to Cleveland, where he said his son has done well.
“I like the teachers,” he said. “I think they’re all great here and they have good programs.”
Gevedon said he is most worried about discipline and class size. One of the things he liked best about private school was the no-nonsense discipline. He worried that with fewer staff it could be harder to enforce the rules. Small class size was a staple of the private school his son attended, too. So far class size at Cleveland has been good, but he worried that could change.
Teresa Noyes, grandmother of a first and third grader, said class size is her big concern too. She said her first grader’s class has 28 kids.
“That’s a lot for a first grade class, I think,” she said.
Then there was Delores Saunders, who was angry. She was at Cleveland to pick up her great nephew, a third grader. Saunders said the district’s priorities for the cuts were all wrong.
“They don’t need to have so many administrators,” she said. “The should have curbed the administration more and left sports, activities and teachers alone.”
Saunders said the district will never pass a levy until it can prove it has a much leaner administration.
Kemp at Grant Elementary School
Kemp was formerly located on Shedbourne Avenue but has moved to the former Grant School on Arcadia in Belmont. The new Kemp is due to open next August, so these are temporary digs for the Kemp folks.
But I was impressed by what a nice building Grant was inside. For years the district leased the school to the Montgomery County Educational Service Center, which offered an alternative school there. But the board has since dumped the ESC, offering alternative schools within the district instead.
So this was the first time I had actually been inside Grant. It is fairly old but seemed well maintained.
Kemp is the only school where I saw evidence of transportation trouble. A couple buses were probably a half-hour late picking kids up. We had a photographer downtown this morning to check on RTA transfers but that appeared to go smoothly. Kids I asked about riding the bus said some buses were late and at least one new driver got briefly lost but otherwise there were no major problems.
(Image credit: Ron Alvey, DDN)
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Dayton Public Schools: Off to a hot start
(Students hustle to class at the high school formerly known as Colonel White.)
In a couple months, the students at what used to be called Colonel White High School in Dayton will be in the cool comfort of a new, air conditioned building on Hoover Avenue, where Roth High School once stood.
But today, they were sweltering in an old building going by a new name. Colonel White is now called Thurgood Marshall High School, a name picked by the students.
“It’s 94 outside, so you know its like 110 in here,” said senior Ci’Erra Mallory as she sat with friends at a round lunch table, out of reach of one of the tall fans placed around the room.
That was nothing. Earlier at Stivers School for the Arts I visited a freshman Spanish class with 32 kids and one of four old wooden windows stuck shut. A small box fan pulled air in from the outside and an even smaller oscillating fan did its best to move it around within the room. Principal Erin Dooley told me 35 kids are actually registered in the class.
It was hot all around the district this morning on the first day of school in Dayton. So far I’ve visited five schools. Here’s a quick summary of what I saw and what I learned:
Stivers School for the Arts
I was surprised to learn that the $70,000 raised by the school’s support group, the Seedling Foundation, has not yet been spent to hire back any adjunct staff that was laid off. Just 25 of 70 adjunct staff were kept from last year, Dooley said.
Even so, the school managed to keep its arts program largely intact. Dooley said all eight arts magnet programs are still operating and she didn’t have to drop a single advanced placement or honors course. How did she do it?
“It was the teachers,” she said simply.
In the summer, about three quarters of the teaching staff showed up for a meeting at which the future Stivers was plotted out. Teachers agreed to take larger class sizes and teach extra sections without extra pay to balance out for small high-end classes that were kept in the schedule. With adjuncts, they tried to keep those that taught classes on, with hopes of hiring back those who taught private lessons and other specialties.
Dooley said meetings are planned soon to figure out how to bring back some of the adjuncts and how many will return. This also was the first of two schools where I ran into Superintendent Percy Mack and board member Stacy Thompson.
Thurgood Marshall High School
There was mixed reaction among the students at the former Colonel White to the idea of renaming this school. Everyone will move into a new school building in October. Some students liked the idea of being the first to open the new school. Some said they felt a little sad leaving a school they think of as home behind. And some wondered if history wasn’t being lost a little with the discarding of the Colonel White name.
I also spoke to Phyllis J. Edmons, principal of the Academic Magnet Academy — a college prep program within Colonel White that has had success raising test scores and the graduation rate.
She said magnet teachers, who previously were confined to the AMA, will now have to teach classes that include non-AMA students. The AMA teachers also have lost their dedicated time for working on collaborative projects. I suppose this is why I’ve heard from some uneasy AMA parents worried about the future of the program. But Edmons was optimistic things would be OK.
Fairview Elementary School
I was hoping to get to Fairview in time to catch some parents dropping kids off, but I got there about five minutes too late. Still, I had a nice chat with second year Principal Charles Davis, who said the morning had gone pretty smoothly thus far.
I also got to talk with a few of the teachers, who seemed in good spirits. For an old school, Fairview is nicely maintained and clean. A teacher mentioned to me that the school is getting an influx of African immigrant families.
Fairview Middle School/Edison Elementary School
This was an unusual set up. As part of the budget cuts, the board closed Edison and moved the entire school — staff, students, etc. — to Fairview. Edison now operates in half the building.
In the other half, last year’s seventh grade from Fairview Middle School is now the eighth grade class. New seventh graders were not added and after this year, the middle school will cease to exist. Then Edison can occupy the building alone until a rebuilt Edison school reopens back on its old location in west Dayton.
The school sign in front has been split down the middle with Edison now on one side and Fairview Middle on the other. There are two offices — one for each school. Edison’s administration operates out of the former attendance office.
The Fairview Middle kids were pretty down on the whole idea. They said they felt like they got the worst side of the building. Several were disappointed, also, that middle school sports were cut. A tall young man named Ryan Durr who played on the basketball team pointed me to a trophy case.
“See those three with the nets over them?” he said. “We won those last year in basketball. We were city champs.”
The plan right now is for no middle school sports this year. But I also ran into Randy Faison, a teacher at Fairview, who hopes to change that. Faison, a football coach at Dunbar High School this year and a one time school board candidate, said a concerned parents group has raised about a third of the $200,000 needed to restore middle school sports. He said he would get me information about how people could contribute to the effort.
Belle Haven Elementary School
You know, one of the things I like about covering Dayton Public Schools is that people tend to be very open and friendly, even when I show up unexpectedly. That’s not always true.
I stopped at Belle Haven late this morning because earlier in the day someone told me only about a third of the staff there returned from last year. Many of their teachers, I was told, were young and lost their jobs to the cuts.
Belle Haven was close to the other schools I was visiting this morning, so I stopped in just to ask about this.
It’s a beautiful new school with air conditioning and many other amenities. That includes tight security. Unlike other buildings, where I often let myself in and meander to the office, at Belle Haven you are ushered via electronic locked doors into the main office first. For safety’s sake, that’s probably a good thing. But it’s not as fun for me.
At the office they called down second year Principal Wyetta Hayden, who took me to her office and asked why I was there. I told her what I heard about the staff changeover.
“We have a full staff here,” she said.
That’s not what I asked. Had there actually been two-thirds of the staff leave and replaced by new people?
She repeated “we have a full staff here” about 10 or 11 times in the next few minutes of conversation.
How many teachers do you have total, I asked?
“Couldn’t you get that information from Jill Moberley (the district’s communication’s chief)?” she asked.
“Yes, I could,” I said. “But since you are the principal and I’m in your office right now I thought I’d ask you.”
That was about as good as it got. I apologized for interrupting her day and arriving unannounced, excused myself and headed off for the next school on list.
Check back here on the blog later for more on the first day of school.
(Image credit: Jan Underwood, DDN)
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Believe it or not, school’s back in
(Teacher’s aide Leroy Luckie carries desks to rooms as staff at Wogaman Elementary School prepares for the first day of school)
Why is Dayton back in school so early? Well, about two years ago, the district merged two calendars — most schools were on a traditional school year plan while others followed a year-round schedule that began in late July and had three week breaks in October, December and March.
As a compromise, Dayton now follows a calendar that was supposed to be a middle ground. Classes start in early August and the breaks are two weeks each. I hear teachers from the old traditional calendar schools are getting pretty weary of the new calendar after two years. They’d rather have their summer back.
Another good reason to stay out of school buildings this early is the heat, and the heat will be on today. Forecasts say it will reach the 90s. In fact, a “heat alert” has been issued for Monday, the first such alert of the entire summer.
I’ll be traveling around to schools all day today, gauging teacher, parent and student reactions to budget cuts and other changes. I’ll try to write a few blog updates through the day, so check back here later.
(Image credit: Ron Alvey, DDN)
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