Principal at La Jolla High Blends In in Inner City

There was J.M. Tarvin, the gregarious principal of high-powered La Jolla High School, pushing and pulling a saw to cut drooping branches that blocked a sidewalk used by kids on their way to Central Elementary’s summer school.

There was Tarvin, who wrestles with issues of Ivy League admission policies and advanced placement courses between September and June, supervising morning recess for the 426 students at the inner-city school and being surrounded by little kids running up to hug him at the knees.

There was Tarvin, who normally talks with teen-agers on subjects ranging from their future careers to the fortunes of the football team, cajoling a shy third-grader to shape up his act, in return for which Tarvin would drive him home next week and persuade the boy’s mother to lift her restriction on him because of his bad behavior.

Six-Week Session

And there was Tarvin, instead of giving a soft-spoken talk to concerned parents at a La Jolla mid-morning coffee, up at the blackboard showing second-graders how to do a math manipulation game using the numbers 7 and 13.

It was all in a long morning’s work for the La Jolla principal, who volunteered to head up the six-week summer session at Central, about 16 miles by car but a world of apart socially and environmentally from the seaside high school along the coast.

Despite night-and-day contrasts between the two schools, Tarvin has slipped into his role at Central as if it were a well-fitting glove. He

has put his seemingly inexhaustible energy into trying to improve things as much as possible for teachers and students during the short period available.

“I think he’s adapted remarkably well to the changed environment,” said Brian Pike, an 11-year veteran of the school who helped with logistics for the summer session. Almost half of the school’s 820 students, most with limited English ability, were invited to the summer session, for free daily lunches, more math and reading classes to improve their basic skills, and to build a more positive attitude toward school.

“You’d never know he was from a La Jolla (school). He treats the kids here the same way we all do and he is very organized, very take-charge like. And he’s been very, very accommodating to the staff.”

Tarvin himself doesn’t see the high standards demanded of teachers and students at La Jolla as any more difficult to implement at Central’s summer session. (There is no summer school at La Jolla High.)

“The key here or at La Jolla, or anywhere, is that teachers have to believe that the school is going to work on their behalf and make them feel important in educating kids, so that the students will have a clean, safe, and protected learning environment,” Tarvin said.

“And I want the kids to see that the school cares about their skills reinforcement and about behavior and values reinforcement.”

Central ranks as the district’s eighth-poorest school based on parent incomes and education, with a student body more than 80% nonwhite and concentrations of Indochinese, Latino and black students. The immediate neighborhood is run-down and littered, with a substantial amount of drug-related crime and a high transiency rate.

A weed-infested city-owned empty lot, used as a dumping ground for everything from condoms to old couches, sits directly across the street from the school’s entrance, symbolic of the difficult world that the students only temporarily leave each day when they enter the Central campus.

“It’s kind of frustrating to see this,” Tarvin tells a visitor as he unlocks a gate and shows the incredible collection of litter on Central Avenue fronting a row of portable classrooms. “They would never accept this in La Jolla; there the city keeps the streets clean right away. Why can’t they have workfare people or somebody clean up this place? The kids learn something about society every time they see this.”

For Tarvin, the situation near the school argues for expansion of the district’s voluntary busing program (VEEP), where nonwhite students in certain schools can choose to attend schools in predominantly white areas, such as La Jolla.

“I’d like to get a crack at every one of these kids when they reach high school because I think if they saw a changed environment on a regular basis, they would learn more quickly that they don’t have to accept the status quo.

“That’s the single biggest difference I’ve found between this community and La Jolla, that here they accept the way things are rather than demanding that things be changed for the better.”

Visited Every Classroom

But the realities are that the district must try to improve the education of most of the students within the confines of the existing urban setting. And Tarvin is equally willing to work as hard as he can within those constraints.

Tarvin visited every classroom during the first week to let the students know who he is and that he cares about their education. He let teachers choose among themselves what classes they would teach and told them that they would have a break during recess, that he and teacher aides would handle supervision.

“I believe in flexibility, so I want the people who do the work to make the decisions as much as possible,” Tarvin said. “As for playground supervision, I consciously want the kids not to always see the teacher right there as a power person, but instead to learn that they can take on self-responsibility.”

Tarvin gently chastised a district cafeteria supervisor the first week for refusing to allow the students who bring a sack lunch to walk through the cafeteria line with their friends.

“I couldn’t believe it!” Tarvin said. “What kind of rule is that, for heaven’s sake? The lack of flexibility becomes so apparent in situations like that, and what does the kid take away from seeing that?”

While counseling two girls who had exchanged blows because of a disagreement over an art project, he asked one whether she kept her room neat, only to find out that the girl and her mother live in a single room because of economic circumstances.

When Tarvin found that the kickballs so popular among the boys during recess were low on air, he gave a kid a couple of dollars to buy pins for pumping in more air because the school has no supplies.

“For these kids, even during the summer, school can be the focal point of their lives, and I want to make it as good as I can,” Tarvin said.