School Make-Over No Slam-Dunk

The outcome seemed as certain as those highlight-reel moves he displayed on the basketball court, the slashing drives to the hoop that made Kevin Johnson a hometown sports hero.

The former NBA star wanted to save his struggling alma mater, Sacramento High School. Test scores were plummeting, student apathy soaring. State sanctions loomed.

Johnson, 37, was already shepherding a community revival in his luckless old Oak Park neighborhood. Now he offered to do the same at “Sac High.” Johnson proposed reinventing the venerable urban campus as a charter school run by his nonprofit community development outfit, St. HOPE Corp. Then he used his all-star connections to raise $6 million from big-ticket benefactors like Bill Gates.

But instead of a storybook ending, Johnson and St. HOPE experienced a summer of turmoil -- a vocal band of disgruntled parents, recall threats against half the school board and a full-court legal fight with the teachers union.

With the start of classes a week away, uncertainty and confusion linger.

Though officials at St. HOPE insist that they will be there to open the doors at the new Sac High on Sept. 2, district officials are scrambling to stitch together contingency plans -- including a full faculty and curriculum -- just in case the courts block Johnson’s team at the last minute. Parents and students have been left guessing much of the summer, wondering just who will command the sprawling, multicultural high school during the coming year.

“It’s kind of hard not knowing what school you’ll be going to,” admitted Jacob Beede, a 16-year-old junior who supports Johnson’s St. HOPE. “Most of us knew it needed to change. Now we just want this over with.”

The fight over Sacramento High has captured the attention of the national educational establishment. It also has left the community cleaved.

There are plenty of believers in Johnson’s vision of dividing a big, impersonal high school campus in the urban core into six theme-based academies focused on college-prep work and accountability. More than 1,300 parents signed a petition supporting the charter school, which would enjoy freedom from many of the rules and regulations of traditional campuses.

But a cadre of doubters says district trustees gave up too soon on the old Sac High, brushing aside a seasoned faculty that had toiled for years in aging classrooms with inadequate supplies and little support from a revolving-door parade of principals.

“I’m not going to run down St. HOPE or Kevin Johnson. I think they’re well intended,” said Marcie Launey, Sacramento City Teachers Assn. president. “But I also think they’re misguided, and they’re certainly inexperienced in running a high school. To tackle something like this is monumental. This is the real world.”

So far, Johnson has proved adept at conquering the real world.

He grew up as that rare kid who escaped the blacktop of Oak Park, one of Sacramento’s first neighborhoods but today among its most impoverished. Even as he scored big in sports at Sac High, then became a star at UC Berkeley and an All-NBA player with the Phoenix Suns, “KJ” never forgot the people and poverty on his hometown block.

Many sports stars bask in balmy solitude during the off-season. Johnson, a deeply spiritual man, would return to Oak Park, toiling on good deeds. Early in his pro career he established St. HOPE (an acronym for Help Our People Excel) as a faith-based after-school program meant to yank kids out of the cellar-dweller mentality that has dogged the community.

In recent years, St. HOPE’s focus has spread to include community development projects. The big achievement is the transformation of a blighted Oak Park block into a brick-and-tile center of community pride. The revamped buildings feature a theater, bookstore, barbershop and Starbucks (complete with a photo montage of KJ’s life story).

Johnson turned his attention to Sac High in December. Word hit that declining test scores on the 1,800-student campus, the second-oldest high school west of the Mississippi, might culminate in takeover by the state.

Over the next three months of community debate, teachers dismissed St. HOPE’s takeover proposal as an attempt to bust the union and strip them of job protections. They said Johnson’s approach wasn’t revolutionary, just an extension of several successful academies already operating at Sac High.

The school board agreed in January to close the high school during summer and consider a charter school run by either St. HOPE or the teachers union. In March, St. HOPE won that contest on a 4-3 vote.

But the fight roared on in court and in the community. In June, a Superior Court judge ruled against St. HOPE, saying the district had failed to win faculty approval for the shift, as is needed if a charter school isn’t starting from scratch.

After Sac High shut down in midsummer, St. HOPE launched the whole application process again, winning approval Aug. 12. The teachers union now pins its hopes on a last-ditch bid in court.

Parents remain divided. St. HOPE foes like Patrice Rogers believe that the district embraced Johnson to sweep its own misdeeds at Sac High under the rug.

Jeanette Polmanteer, though, gushes over the idea of her son’s high school being run by the former pro basketball player.

“Kevin Johnson,” she said, “engenders trust and caring.”

But amid this summer’s jockeying, Johnson has receded into the background. He declined an interview request. Margaret Fortune, a former assistant education secretary for Gov. Gray Davis who is now with St. HOPE, is the group’s public face these days.

In her corner office at St. HOPE’s Oak Park headquarters, she described Sac High as a broken school where only one in five students reads at grade level and just 14% of the graduating seniors meet college requirements.

St. HOPE’s half dozen 300-student “small learning communities” will each have their own principal and faculty, intended to provide a hands-on experience and dissolve the anonymity that lets students fall through the cracks.

“We’re implementing a model of accountability,” Fortune said. “The kids have to achieve. And the teachers will be held accountable for that outcome.”

She said the California Teachers Assn. fears the precedent of losing a big high school in the state’s capital. If St. HOPE succeeds, she said, “this sort of change could be replicated elsewhere.”

Union leaders blame St. HOPE for the turmoil. Instead of trying to work with existing faculty, Johnson pushed for wholesale change, they say.

“It’s a horror story,” said Diane Ross, a CTA attorney. “The students have been hung out in uncertainty.”

A state-ordered audit released in May mostly blamed district officials for Sac High’s troubles, saying they had failed to provide adequate leadership, support for the faculty and basic needs, like textbooks. District officials called the audit skewed and said they had been given no time to rebut its findings.

The old Sac High did have a few islands of high achievement. Jean Crowder’s MESL Honors Academy has sent every one of its graduates to college, and the Health Careers Academy had a similar stellar record.

“To lose something so successful was very, very difficult to take,” said Nancy Reclusado, the health academy director.

Crowder said Johnson should have opened his own school, not wrested away an existing campus. “If they’re so confident they can draw kids,” Crowder said, “why don’t they rent a building and start a high school, instead of taking over this one?”

Now even the best teachers have been scattered to new jobs around the district. Some who had chosen to make a go of it with St. HOPE didn’t stick.

Geoff Melchor, a one-time English teacher at Sac High, signed a contract with St. HOPE but resigned after a summer staff meeting concluded with a Christian hymn. It had him wondering whether Johnson’s organization would be able to leave behind its faith-based roots as it angled into public education.

“I remember wryly commenting to a couple colleagues at the meeting that next time we ought to bring in a Muslim or Hmong student to add some balance,” Melchor said. “I have a hard time believing a sectarian message won’t creep in.”

Fortune says that no hymn was sung and that religion would not be an issue at the new Sac High. She is backed by school board President Rob Fong, a supporter of the new charter school.

Although a boost at Sac High is no slam-dunk, he remains confident that Johnson can deliver.

“He has a demonstrated track record of caring,” Fong said. “He’s attracted resources and galvanized the community in a way the district never has.”

Fortune added: “He walked these streets. He survived these streets. But as a young man he was always troubled by the community’s condition. He turned his celebrity and achievement into an opportunity to help.”

Katie Fechtner, 17, agrees that Johnson’s heart is in the right place. But the lingering dispute has distressed her. She can’t decide whether she’s going to finish up at Sac High, or choose another school.

“It’s crazy,” she said. “Classes are just days away, and most of us don’t have a school yet. Our senior year already feels like it’s going down the tubes.”