Incoming 7th-Graders Camp Out to Stay In Gompers’ Academic World

More than 100 incoming seventh-graders at Gompers Secondary School on Monday began the third week of a special summer “camp” on the Southeast San Diego campus to give them extra study and academic skills to succeed this fall at the acclaimed math-science-computer magnet facility.

The six-week, four-hour daily sessions in math, computers, English and social studies are the latest effort--and one of the largest so far--to address equity problems at Gompers, the city’s best-known school for its dozens of national academic awards in both science and social studies.

The intensive program, which includes academic field trips, involves neighborhood students, almost all of them nonwhite, who have signed up to attend Gompers, a 7th- through 12th-grade school. Parents have complained for years that Gompers’ traditional school-within-a-magnet-school setup has educationally limited their children while catering to white students, who voluntarily bus to Gompers from other areas of San Diego as part of the district’s integration plan.

To Become a Total Magnet

The camp and other student-support efforts, according to a new district report, are a key to the year-old Gompers renewal plan, which will convert the school to a magnet for all students this fall.

Positive changes in curriculum and teacher attitudes during the plan’s first year are noted in an evaluation of the long-troubled school, where a year ago tensions exploded into vitriolic debate. But the report also found that difficulties remain in counseling, student discipline and veteran teachers’ morale.

Both the district report and a study by an 18-member committee of parents and teachers conclude that the jury is still out on whether Gompers can become educationally integrated and maintain its academic excellence. The reports will be presented to the Board of Education today.

“Gompers staff . . . have adjusted the curriculum and made additions to implement the total magnet program next year,” the district evaluation says. “Support programs exist. The extent to which support programs are successful will have to be determined.

Surveys of the staff, the evaluation says, “indicate some degree of skepticism and indecision . . . as to how well the plan for the total school magnet has been developed. Many hold a wait-and-see attitude, unwilling to commit themselves at this point,” although far fewer teachers are against the plan than commonly thought.

‘Level of Excellence’

The parent-teacher survey also reveals feelings of uncertainty as Gompers gears up for the all-school magnet after a year of sometimes contentious planning: 58% of the staff said the “level of excellence” of the magnet curriculum was not being maintained. But 57% also felt that the “educational excellence” of the instructional program and staff was being maintained.

“Yes, next year will be critical,” Principal Marie Thornton said Monday. Thornton has been accused of not communicating but has worked hard to improve faculty participation with some positive results, the district report said.

“There will be no watering down of the curriculum . . . if anything, it has been enhanced and enriched,” Thornton said. As for the success of neighborhood students--many of whom come less prepared academically than their white counterparts from the northern tier of the city--Thornton cited tutoring and other special programs already planned.

“Those support services will be in place from Day 1.”

The heart of the plan calls for redesigning both the high-powered science curriculum and humanities courses to reach more students, particularly neighborhood students at the junior-high level, which are mostly black or Latino.

Traditionally, Gompers restricted the junior-high magnet to a limited number of minority students and an equal number of white students, with the bulk of the nonwhite neighborhood students relegated to a different academic program, perceived as inferior by many. The smaller all-magnet 9th- through 12th-grade high school is not directly affected by the renewal plan.

Thornton hopes the magnet camp--purposely not called summer school--will show that the renewal effort can succeed. Five Gompers teachers volunteered to teach the session.

‘Need to Be Successful’

“The idea is that the kids need to be successful in a total school magnet, and a concentrated summer session will prove more beneficial than pulling kids out of classes during the regular year for this instruction,” Thornton said. She also hopes that the students--about 25% of the seventh-graders expected in the fall--will prove positive role models for others.

Thornton said the number of white seventh-graders choosing to be bused to the Gompers program in September remains high. But she believes that the number of neighborhood students might drop slightly because some pupils may decide that they are not interested in a science-math-computer emphasis, choosing to go elsewhere.

“It’s possible that we will have a smaller school in terms of numbers, but it will be better integrated educationally,” Thornton said. “We’re not trying to scare anyone off, but at the same time we want those attending to be realistic about the fact that we are keeping our focus and standards high.”