Remaking Lincoln High : District Revamps School, Staff, Curriculum

Weeks before their students would return, Abraham Lincoln High School faculty members sat in the stifling heat of their school cafeteria last week to take lessons of their own--on how to become more effective teachers.

At the back of the same long room, workmen moved quietly amid stacks of aluminum window frames, readying themselves for the task of replacing Lincoln’s many old and shattered windows.

Soon, others will descend on the 37-year-old high school at 150 S. 49th St. in a hasty effort to eliminate a thicket of graffiti, to repair smashed locker doors and window tiles, to spread paint and to lay carpet.

The activity is part of a closely watched experiment taking place this fall in the San Diego city schools--the transformation of Lincoln High School, now a less than successful magnet school, into Lincoln Preparatory School for Humanities, Language and Health Professions.

In its dramatic effort to resurrect a failing school, the San Diego Unified School District is spending more than $600,000 to overhaul the curriculum and repair the battered school, including $100,000 to pay teachers to take a week of seminars on teaching techniques.

Lincoln will open with new courses, strict new requirements, new books and a staggering list of new programs. It boasts a specially selected new principal leading a handpicked staff that includes 19 new teachers, two new vice principals, new deans and even a new head custodian.

But most of all, there is new hope--spreading outward from the school to Southeast San Diego blacks who have always considered Lincoln one of their prized institutions, even as they watched it slide downhill.

“There is a lot of parental interest and community interest because Lincoln is much more than just another high school,” said the Rev. Robert Ard, pastor of Christ Church of San Diego. “It has become symbolic of the community. As we are able to turn that school around and it begins to move, so does this community.”

“We’re not going to have a second chance,” said Walter Kudumu, chairman of the Education Sunday organizing committee, one of the many community groups assisting in the reform effort. “If we don’t do it now, it’s going to be another generation before we have another opportunity to change things around at Lincoln.”

Stoked by Ruby Cremaschi-Schwimmer--the energetic, outspoken new principal selected by Supt. Thomas Payzant from a local junior high school after a nationwide search failed to produce a desirable candidate--reform fervor at the school is affecting veteran teachers who chose to stay and new teachers who applied to transfer to Lincoln.

“They found the person that they needed,” said Randall Hasper, head of the English department. “She’s dynamic. She’s enthusiastic. She kind of has a genius for motivating people. She’s eloquent. When she speaks, you want to get involved.”

“If anybody can pull it off, she’s the lady who can do it,” said Sallie Cadwallader, president of the 9th District PTA, which covers San Diego and Imperial counties.

If it works--a judgment that will not be made for about three years--Cremaschi-Schwimmer may be able to take her place alongside a small group of other American principals credited with turning around inner-city schools through a combination of discipline, parental involvement and high expectations for students.

If it works.

To be successful, Lincoln must dramatically improve student test scores, lure back the minority students who now spurn Lincoln for bus rides to schools they consider better, and attract whites to integrate a school that was 92.5% minority last year.

“It’s our job to facilitate the integration of the school. That will be a real priority,” said Mary Gilliland, outgoing coordinator of the district’s magnet integration programs. “But we will not set it against meeting the needs of the resident kids at the school.”

Despite a summer of great expectations, Cremaschi-Schwimmer knows what she is inheriting at Lincoln High School. Although test scores have increased, the most recent results are still the district’s lowest in all three categories--reading, math and language.

Lincoln has the district’s second-highest dropout rate, its second-highest proportion of low-income students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, and its highest high school “mobility” index--the number of students who enter or leave the school between October and June.

A study of the San Diego Unified School District’s class of 1984 showed that Lincoln had the lowest proportion of graduates attending college full time and the highest proportion of those who are unemployed.

Cremaschi-Schwimmer and others consider Lincoln students’ dismal attendance their top challenge this September. In a school capable of holding 1,984 students, only 759 were enrolled last October. By June, the enrollment had dwindled to 638.

On any given day last year, only 89% of the students enrolled showed up--the lowest attendance figure in the district.

Meanwhile, 1,053 potential Lincoln students were boarding buses for other schools under the district’s Voluntary Ethnic Enrollment Program, an integration effort that has succeeded in convincing many Lincoln parents that their children would receive a better education elsewhere. More than anything else, many teachers and officials say, the 19-year-old VEEP program has led to Lincoln’s predicament.

“It was a drain of the students who would be your social leaders, student leaders, academic leaders and your students with high parental involvement,” said Vic Player, who has taught at Lincoln for 17 years.

The little things that make a school more than just a place to take classes suffered last year. Membership in Lincoln’s choir, which Cremaschi-Schwimmer remembered as top notch during her tenure as vice-principal at the school during the mid-1970’s, dropped to seven people, she said.

The band virtually disbanded.

Student government posts went unfilled. Drama productions were few and far between. Lincoln was the only city secondary school without a PTA last year.

Only the football and basketball teams, perennial powers in the City Central League, continued to succeed.

Teacher morale plunged when the district announced in October that, as part of the overhaul, all teachers would have to reapply for their jobs and compete with outside applicants. Many considered themselves lame ducks for the remainder of the year. Vice-principals were removed during the year, and principal Laserik Saunders was told he would not be back in the fall.

For teachers, “the implication was there: You haven’t done a good job and we’re going to come in and replace you with someone who can come in and do it. You’re part of the problem,” said Susan Popovich, staff representative for the San Diego Teachers Assn.

As it has for some time, Lincoln continued to wear the worn look of a neglected school, despite continued parent demands for a coat of paint and a fence to keep outsiders off the section of 49th Street, which runs right through the middle of the campus.

“I believe that if I put the (Lincoln parents) on a bus and took them to the other high schools, there would be riot,” Cremaschi-Schwimmer said . . . . “Just because this school (has) a high percentage of minority kids doesn’t mean they don’t need the same things other kids (have). I don’t care how old the building is. I see inequities.”

As if to rub the noses of Lincoln’s overwhelmingly black population in those inequities, the classrooms --a small, separate school-within-a-school designed to attract white students from other neighborhoods--were well-painted and freshly furnished. But even that program attracted only half its enrollment goal of 110 students.

At the Education Center, administrators had been preparing for a change. Last October, they proposed to turn Lincoln into an Academy of Language and Classical Studies that would include study of Latin and the classical foundations of western civilization.

But parents balked at the plan, and the humanities, language and health magnet was proposed instead. Under the plan, all students at Lincoln will be involved in special courses in one of those three disciplines, eliminating the school-within-a-school program that Cremaschi-Schwimmer considers elitist. The Board of Education approved the idea in January.

Included in the reform is a lengthy list of innovative programs targeted at the wide range of ills that afflict Lincoln. To spur parental involvement, which is crucial to any successful school, a “community room” staffed by a full-time liaison will be located in the school.

Parents will be invited to spend time in classes or work on projects for Lincoln. Cremaschi-Schwimmer also intends to start a PTA to complement the booster club that backs the school’s sports teams.

“You will become a Lincoln disciple,” she said of parents. “You will become indoctrinated. When I get through putting them to work, they’ll either go away or become part of this.”

Teachers will call the homes of absent students every night to encourage attendance. Outreach counselors will work with students in the community. Inside the school, students will meet with teachers and counselors for 30 minutes every day to discuss their needs and problems. The school day has been lengthened to accommodate the change.

Department heads will teach only two classes each day, freeing them to spend three periods coaching their colleagues in teaching techniques. Two deans have been added to handle discipline so that vice-principals can work on curricula.

Academically, the order of the day is “high expectations”--refusing to teach down to Lincoln’s youngsters because they have a history of low achievement. To bring students up to speed, remedial and support programs will be beefed up.

“We have a philosophy that every kid can learn,” said Cremaschi-Schwimmer. “We know that, we believe that and we’re going to sell that.”

Beginning with this year’s ninth graders, Lincoln students must take three years of Latin, German, French or Spanish to graduate. Other district students have no language requirement. Lincoln students will also take more math and science than other students.

The medical program has been expanded. About $85,000 in library and textbooks have been ordered, and the school’s biomedical laboratory has added equipment. Academic partnerships have been formed with UC San Diego’s prestigious medical center and the UCSD Extension to bring college professors into the school. More extra-curricular activities are planned.

Loud criticism has so far been absent. But some observers have concerns.

Kudumu, the Education Sunday organizing committee chairman, wonders whether the reform program is going too fast, too soon and without clear, measurable goals. Hasper admitted that some teachers are dazed by the pace and quantity of the changes.

Other teachers and community members are wary of a past record of broken promises from the district, particularly on repairs and funding for new programs.

“I have commitments from the district to do everything, but I’m surprised at how slow everything is moving,” Cremaschi-Schwimmer conceded.

For a variety of reasons, including dismay over Lincoln’s perennial problems, some teachers saw the reapplication requirement as their chance to leave and simply did not ask for their jobs back. Most applied to work at other district schools.

But architects of the renaissance believe that when word gets out, Lincoln area students and whites from around the city will choose to attend Lincoln for its education. They noted that many people believed Gompers Secondary School’s math, science and computer magnet program would suffer because it is also located in Southeast San Diego. The program now has a waiting list of more than 1,000 students every year.

“It’s going to work. We’ve taken a long look at a lot of research, and we’ve tried to incorporate into our planning all the things research tells us makes a school successful,” said Al Cook, assistant superintendent for the area that includes Lincoln.

“People will go to where they think the grass is greener,” said George Frey, assistant superintendent of the district’s community relations and integration services division. “If they think their kids can get a better education than at School X, they will send their kids to Lincoln High.”