Hoover High Works on Turning School Into a Hub for Community

The names of the students and parents in the Hoover High School classes included Guerrero, Gearhart, Pham, Hubbard and Lewis--Latino, white, Asian and black--reflecting the ethnic diversity of the school’s East San Diego neighborhood.

They were scattered among courses in computing, Chinese language and culture, clay-making, holiday crafts and photography. All of the studying was voluntary and taking place on a Saturday morning.

Welcome to a unique effort by Hoover to turn one of the city’s oldest high schools into a community center for the diverse population surrounding it. Now into its second month, the project offers an eclectic mix of free monthlong Saturday courses for Hoover students, their parents, students and parents from Wilson Middle School, and fourth- and fifth-graders and their parents in the seven elementary schools that feed into Wilson and Hoover.

Already, upwards of 150 people stream onto the campus each Saturday beginning at 8 a.m., an hour before classes even begin. The initial turnouts have raised the expectations of Principal Doris Alvarez that she and her staff can generate in one of San Diego’s most ethnically mixed and transient neighborhoods a loyalty and enthusiasm toward Hoover as an important educational resource.

Long-Range Goals

“Our long-range hope is to have Hoover become the hub of a lot of activities,” Alvarez said. Those would include not only various classes but weekend sports activities as well, such as community Pop Warner football. In addition, another long-range goal is to stem the district’s high dropout rate of almost one out of every three students between the ninth and 12th grades.

Hoover is the district’s only high school designated as an ABC (Already Balanced Community) school, meaning that its resident enrollment reflects within 10% the district’s overall ethnic makeup and that the school does not use voluntary busing or special magnet programs to balance the ethnic makeup with students outside the neighborhood.

“The idea is a fantastic one to get schools to meet community needs,” said Gene Ernst, principal at Euclid Elementary, one of the feeder schools.

“We’re trying to keep the school balanced, to keep students from choosing to shift to (special programs) elsewhere in the district, to generate positive feelings toward Hoover so that kids and their parents will feel good about Hoover and want to come here,” Alvarez said.

Barbara Shaw, coordinator for the Saturday project, added, “By offering enrichment classes that students normally don’t have a chance to take in a daily program, we want to keep our majority (white) students from going to a magnet school and keep our non-majority kids from joining voluntary busing to (a majority population) school (with an image of being better).”

Last year, principals from the Hoover schools cluster began parenting classes for parents with children in the various schools. Those classes are continuing this year.

“The principals in the Hoover cluster work well together and look upon themselves as one community so the ground was ripe for some kind of move such as the Saturday project,” said Eloise Cisneros, assistant superintendent who oversees the Hoover area. “And this idea is a tremendous concept because it is not punitive like Saturday schools have been in the past.”

ABC schools such as Hoover tend to include neighborhoods with large numbers of rental properties because minority groups tend not to be able to afford homes as easily, and they tend to have a higher percentage of single-family parents than the school district average, a district report said.

Encouragement for Parents

By encouraging parents to come as well--there is a computer class just for parents--the school wants to show that learning continues for life, not just between kindergarten and 12th grade or college.

More than $100,000 in special ABC funds provided by the school district officials helps pay for the program. The Hoover parent-teacher organization sells refreshments during a 15-minute social break. Alvarez hopes that as word of the Saturday program spreads, she will be able to tap the resources of San Diego State University and IBM, both institutions that sponsor Hoover under the business-education partnership program.

Last Saturday, Hoover offered the first of two weeks of two computing courses for fourth- and fifth-graders, one for parents, and clay making, holiday crafts and Chinese for sixth- through 12th-graders and their parents.

Wilson seventh-grade chums Tony Guerrerro, Santiago Covarrubias and Jose Ibarra had taken computing last month--although the course is intended primarily for elementary school students--and showed up Saturday for clay-making. Tony brought along his brother Juan Carlos--”I was named for the King of Spain,” he said--and Santiago convinced his brother Eduardo to come this month.

Signed Up for Computing

Juan Carlos and Eduardo, both fifth-graders at Euclid Elementary, signed up for computing.

Similarly, Wilson eighth-grader Binh Pham, who had taken mask-making last month, showed up for clay-making Saturday and brought his ninth-grade friend Dong Vu from Hoover and Dong’s younger brother Y from Wilson to make cups and pots under the direction of teacher Bill Davidson.

The word-of-mouth spread of Hoover’s offerings is vital to the program’s success, Shaw said.

In Jane McCabe’s holiday craft class, several parent-child duos were busy fashioning wreaths from branches McCabe had cut earlier and brought to school. Carmen Lewis and her daughter Andrea brought along Andrea’s friend Xaviera Collins from Hamilton Elementary.

“I think this is great but I wish they had more,” Carmen Lewis said.

A similar sentiment was voiced by Candice Shean who attended with her daughter Erin Jacobsen from Adams Elementary. “We both mutually decided to take this after Erin brought the flyer (advertising the classes) home,” Shean said. “Erin was also interested in taking Chinese too” because a lot of her classmates are from Asia.

The largest family contingent belonged to Terry Bonilla, with her daughters Christy and Jaime from Adams Elementary and their grandmother, Jeannette Clark.

Franklin Elementary fifth-grader Dong Nguyen was busy writing short stories about dancing apples and jumping flowers on his computer after Ron Mahoney showed his students the basics of computers. “My uncle has a computer and I want to know how to use it,” Nguyen said.

Planned to Bring Brother

Ramona Lott from Franklin and her mother Debra were equally excited about their first time on a computer. Debra planned to bring along Ramona’s twin brother for the next session.

“He wanted to come today but I hadn’t returned the form in time,” she said.

So far, the greatest number of students have come from the elementary schools in the Hoover feeder pattern, Shaw said. She has spoken to all fourth- and fifth-grade classes at the seven schools. Because sign-ups for classes are on a first-come, first-served basis, the popular computing classes filled up last month even before Shaw was able to get around to all the schools.

“We had to give preference this time to the schools left behind in October,” she said.

Hoover teachers are still experimenting with classes to attract more secondary school students. The next two months will see offerings in Spanish and French, in learning how to be a clown, in computers, and in pillow-making, among other subjects that can entice voluntary participation and reinforce basic skills in some fashion, Shaw said.

“Secondary school kids have a lot more things going on in their leisure time,” Shaw said. “A lot have jobs or sports. We’re going to meet with groups (at Hoover and Wilson) to see what they might like.”

Some students have suggested that sports classes, such as karate and gymnastics, would be popular, and Shaw has located a Wilson teacher who will teach aerobics beginning in February. Alvarez would even like to set up a skateboarding class if potential liability problems can be overcome.

In addition, Alvarez said, the Saturday program could offer tutoring and cooperative learning sessions, where high school students could help one another in courses ranging from English to math with minimal teacher assistance. The high school’s library, one of the district’s most modern, could be opened to give introductory sessions and perhaps readings for elementary students.

Indochinese Sought

Shaw would also like to get more Indochinese parents to participate but realizes both that many work even on Saturday and that many speak only limited English.

The teachers for the Saturday classes have come from Hoover, from Wilson, and some of the elementary schools in the feeder pattern. As the program expands, Shaw needs to attract a larger pool of instructors, including some volunteers because she said most teachers are not willing to give up a half-day every Saturday.

“Rotating is the best way,” computer teacher Mahoney said. “But I’m here because I like kids and I like to see these kids come onto a high school campus and learn not to be afraid.”

Shaw said that instructors and students from San Diego State are an untapped pool for Hoover. Hoover is a laboratory school for San Diego State’s School of Education and Shaw would like to be able to have students staff a Saturday tutorial center. Athletic teams from SDSU will hold a sports day next month at Hoover and Shaw hopes to recruit from the teams for future sports courses.