Gompers’ Assignment: Blending of Schools

Twelfth-grader Cybele Knowles says that many of her classmates laugh at the periodic announcements about the 100% Club made during their morning class in the math-science-computer magnet program at Gompers Secondary School. The club, one of a host of new programs at the school this year, awards students who have perfect attendance for any given month with a movie or cultural event.

“From our perspective, it’s a waste of time,” said Knowles, who buses to Gompers each day for the magnet offerings. “I’m in the advantaged class and have motivation from my parents.” Knowles is more worried about whether enough college-level courses are available for advanced senior students now that some magnet high school teachers are required to teach junior high students as well--part of another change at the school.

For eighth-grader Alejandra Aguayo, however, the 100% club has already paid off in a more positive attitude toward school. Aguayo attends the non-magnet seventh-eighth grade junior high portion as a neighborhood student from the predominantly minority southeast San Diego area around Gompers.

“I think I’m more comfortable and I think teachers (with courses at both junior- and senior-high levels) are trying harder,” said

Aguayo, adding that she has made new friends through the school’s new REM Center (Respect, Expect, Motivate) where students are counseled on how to get along better with other ethnic groups.

“Because of REM, I know how to communicate better, not to interrupt on purpose, to listen more carefully,” Aguayo said.

Two Perspectives

Two constituencies, two perspectives: in a nutshell, the differing views of Knowles and Aguayo symbolize the challenge for the San Diego Unified School District in handling the complexities at Gompers. The school is at once a citywide 7th- through 12th-grade academic magnet with a stellar reputation and an inner-city junior high coping with all the problems attendant to urban schools.

The five-grade magnet program has 866 students, divided almost evenly between white and minority students, two-thirds bused in, one-third from the neighborhood. The regular neighborhood junior high has 506 students, all but 12 from ethnic minorities.

After several years of sporadic conflict and ill-will among teachers, students and parents over how to satisfy both neighborhood and magnet goals, the school has embarked on a major effort to extend benefits of the magnet program to the overall school population.

Although the effects of almost two-dozen programs are only beginning to be felt, both district and school administrators showcased Gompers at a community breakfast last week, attempting to dispel persistent rumors that the school has come apart at the seams from past years of turmoil.

“I haven’t seen any of the issues (of race accusations) that were associated with blow ups last year,” said history teacher David Vigilante, respected throughout the district for both his teaching ability and his concern for students. Vigilante’s high school history students won a statewide competition in Sacramento this weekend in a contest about the U.S. Constitution and will represent California at the national finals in Washington in April. “I think that (principal Marie) Thornton has done a good job in getting students to take more pride in the school--like not wearing curlers in the hair to school,” said music teacher Sharletta Richardson. Richardson has long fought for efforts to raise expectations of neighborhood students. “Teachers are reaching out more to give instructional time to those students who don’t have strong reinforcement at home.”

Changing Image

“We have the image of a school that is all brains,” said Thornton, a veteran district administrator now in her second year at Gompers. “But we want an image that all kids here can get a good education.” Thornton also has set up numerous activities--dances, pep rallies, clubs, intramural football games--on a campus without organized sports in order to electrify a traditionally leaden social atmosphere and boost student mixing.

“It’s the best for the past several years,” said senior Quan Phung. “The homecoming dance saw the best mixture of kids in years and years.”

“Marie (Thornton) is trying to get everyone to think beyond issues of black-versus-white because that is the way any problem at Gompers has always been seen,” Al Cook, district assistant superintendent for the Gompers area, said. Cook was the moving force this past summer in expediting transfers to other schools for several teachers who couldn’t accept the changes at Gompers or who were vocal critics of the new programs.

Gompers has long stood at the top of the district’s 45 special academic programs intended to lure white students to schools in predominantly minority areas as part of the voluntary integration program. High-powered achievers across all ethnic groups attend the Gompers program, creating the most integrated campus of any at the more than 150 district schools. The waiting list contains the names of hundreds of students, from Bay Terrace to La Jolla.

With the magnet, the school has won the National Science Olympiad, captured a preponderance of local, state and national science fair awards, and placed more than 90% of its senior graduates in four-year colleges and universities. Despite the math-science emphasis, the high school has also garnered prizes in history, English and other humanities fields. Test scores are among the district’s highest at the high school level, ranking at or near the top in math and language year after year.

Yet the regular junior high has suffered by comparison for years, its students--overwhelmingly minority--with far fewer educational opportunities than for those in the magnet. The junior high has regularly recorded some of the district’s lowest standardized test scores and has featured a sometimes-dispirited faculty.

Tough Job

Over the years, neighborhood parent groups questioned why the successes enjoyed by the magnet could not be enjoyed as well by the junior high, in particular since the number of neighborhood students who qualify for the magnet is limited so that the total magnet population will be balanced at about 50% minority and 50% white children. (Non-magnet students move to Lincoln High School beginning with the ninth grade.)

“The real key is in improving the junior high without hurting the magnet,” said district school board president Dorothy Smith. “Mrs. Thornton is keenly aware that this is a tough job, that she could be challenged every step along the way.”

Said Thornton: “We know that our school represents the community in the largest sense, that we have children from various communities, and that we want to make sure that continues.”

The situation at Gompers developed in large part from the historical dominance of the magnet. Established as the district’s first secondary magnet in 1978, the program at first was only for high school students and was physically separated from the junior high by a fence. The magnet was gradually expanded to include seventh and eighth graders but instruction for them was still largely separate from the non-magnet students.

“I don’t think it was a deliberate attempt to make magnet resources unavailable to (other) students,” said Fran Hill, the magnet coordinator for the past three years. “It was simply felt that the magnet was to be special for students who otherwise would not come all the way across town for a program unless it was different from that at their regular school.”

Added Hill: “But since (all) of the magnet programs at (southeast) elementary schools are total school magnets, animosity built up in the community because only some of their kids could qualify for the magnet and they wondered whether (the rest) were getting any benefits from having the program at Gompers.” Also, most of the magnet teachers had been recruited specifically to teach at the high school level.

Eliminating Differences

Hill said that, under Thornton, differences between magnet and non-magnet programs at the junior high level have been eliminated to a large extent. Until two years ago, computers were not available to non-magnet students. Today, a new introductory computer course gives the regular junior high students the same chances as magnet participants. In addition, students from both programs have the same access to new science labs. English and history courses are no longer divided between magnet and non-magnet students.

“I’ve seen so many of the (neighborhood) students so proud that they know about computers,” said Richardson. “And most of them come from homes where the parents don’t own a computer, don’t know about a computer, compared to majority kids whose parents may own a computer company.”

In addition, two elementary schools that feed into Gompers, Webster and Johnson, have established computer magnets so that neighborhood students will both be better prepared when they enter Gompers and will be more interested in applying for the magnet program, Hill said.

But Thornton realizes that many neighborhood students still arrive at Gompers lacking adequate verbal and math skills. To improve matters, she has set up after-school tutoring on Tuesday and Thursday where teachers volunteer their time. Other teachers have “adopted” individual students and spend extra time checking their progress, Hill said, “and these personal relationships have been very positive in building bridges and improving grades.”

Teacher Support

The move to have high school teachers lead courses at the junior high level is controversial among some teachers, however. Behind the move is the premise that the junior high students deserve exposure to teachers with reputations for motivating their students, resulting in stronger academic performances.

“What has been hard is to secure the full cooperation of the faculty, because some simply don’t feel integration is part of their job,” said Pat Sumi, an educational consultant and parent active at Gompers for many years. “Parents really have to feel that the teachers really want to teach all kids.”

Another teacher, who asked not to be named, said that some instructors have become accustomed to teaching “high-powered” kids, many of them qualified for the gifted and talented program, who come to Gompers already well-prepared for as much science and math that the school can deliver.

“Junior high can be a whole different ball of wax and some may not be suited for it,” the teacher said.

Magnet senior student Knowles said that the situation comes down to a matter of priorities. “I can say I have suffered because a teacher who was going to teach advanced placement physics is instead teaching seventh-grade science,” she said. “But I haven’t really suffered and I know that Mrs. Thornton does want to raise expectations of the community.”

Some magnet parents worry that the school’s outstanding science teachers will become frustrated with additional workloads and transfer to other schools, especially since the school district as a whole is short of science instructors.

“If Gompers were to lose its premier science teachers, I don’t know if the magnet could go on,” said Mrs. Scott Steadman, a parent of a Gompers student. “Parents of non-neighborhood kids don’t want to jeopardize the citywide reputation . . . but they don’t spend a lot of time at the campus and don’t hear the concerns of the neighborhood.”

Hill and other teachers believe this year’s initial concerns about cross-teaching will become less if the district provides adequate preparation time and training where needed. “We are only four or five months into this and I believe that teachers are professional enough to see this through,” Hill said. “I just don’t see a detrimental effect because teachers are working collaboratively from class to class.”

Sees Improvement

Pam Springer, a physical education teacher, said that teacher cliques of past years have broken up to a large extent this year and do not dominate as in the past.

“I’ve been here three years and this year is so much better,” she said. “Three years ago I had probably the worst year I ever had in 13 years of teaching.” Springer said that when she first arrived, the physical education classes were divided between magnet and non-magnet students and that most students wore their street clothes during gym because lockers were not provided.

“Some teachers told me that the kids couldn’t handle lockers, that they wouldn’t let you mark uniforms (with their names) . . . but it was more that the teachers didn’t want to bother,” Springer said.

“But now we use the lockers, we have a (gym) uniform, and I sense less tension in my classes now.” Springer also is offering more choices during athletics, including an aerobics class where she taught dance steps that several girls told her proved helpful in breaking the ice during the school’s first dance this year.

“Mrs. Thornton has done only positive things as far as I am concerned,” Springer said.

No one underestimates the difficulty ahead for the Gompers campus.

In citing the difficulty in motivating neighborhood children, parent Sumi recounted her experience in helping to set up the school’s chess club last year. Magnet students can be seen playing chess almost every day during lunch.

“We had a (chess) master who was black give a demonstration last year and it was amazing how many neighborhood kids he attracted,” Sumi said. “We thought, ‘Hot dog, here’s a way to get kids mixing and some collegiality.’ But this past September, when we started calling the kids who had signed up for the club, we found that almost all had moved, that few were living at the same place as before, but were now with a brother, or a different grandmother, or whatever.

“That instability in family life tells me that there will be no quickie answers, that the school has to go beyond just the magnet program to make a difference with the community.”