Gompers Situation Improving, Trustees Told : Education: Bright report card by faculty, parents sharply contrasts with district evaluation at troubled magnet school.

As the long-troubled Gompers Secondary School begins its third year of a much-ballyhooed renewal plan, teachers and parents told school trustees Tuesday that there is a new attitude that has improved student discipline, teacher expectations and brought about an improved curriculum.

The school board expressed surprise at the upbeat presentation from more than 20 Gompers representatives, which contrasted sharply with a district evaluation that said severe problems remain at the math-science-computer magnet facility in Southeast San Diego. The evaluation was based on interviews, testing results and other data through June, 1990.

But all the trustees took the Gompers staff at their word Tuesday and were visibly moved when teacher Sherry Kataoka broke down and cried uncontrollably while at the podium describing a new determination by the school “to believe in its heart that all children can and will learn.”

“I’ve probably been the most critical of (what has happened) at Gompers and felt it was self-destructing,” said board president Kay Davis about longstanding and bitter debates over how to maintain the high-powered science curriculum--intended to attract white students to the heavily non-white neighborhood--while extending its benefits to the non-white neighborhood students long shut out of the special magnet offerings.

“And I held Marie Thornton personally responsible,” she said of the Gompers principal.

Davis was the most strident trustee calling for Thornton’s replacement. “But I publicly today have to give her credit for the start of a turnaround.

“You’ve made some very powerful statements here . . . although I’m still very concerned about the failure rate at the junior high level and the dissatisfaction with the counseling office.

“But certainly, if you here in this room are an indicator, the situation between Gompers today and last year is unrecognizable.”

Trustee Jim Roache, also highly critical of Gompers in the past, said later that board members have been hearing other indications of a new willingness to cooperate by teachers. Almost half of the teachers are new after schools Supt. Tom Payzant gave Thornton the go-ahead to remove veteran teachers who had rebelled against changes at the 7th-through-12th-grade atypical school.

“That new attitude is critical, absolutely critical, if other changes to boost academic achievement is to occur,” Roache said. “I wouldn’t have put a nickel down on Gompers’ salvation a year ago. . . . Sure, it’s not Utopia, but it’s risen Phoenix-like.”

Teacher Jim Meyers, a five-year veteran at Gompers, said the school “is a better place now” than anytime during his tenure there. He said that students throughout his classes of advanced physics, chemistry and science for non-English speakers are exhibiting an improved willingness to learn, backed up by the higher expectations among many more teachers than in the past.

“I’ve seen teachers more patient this year, there’s a good attitude among all of us,” said Sharletta Richardson, a choir teacher at Gompers for 13 years. “It’s easy to teach kids who are quiet, smart and cooperative, but Gompers gives you the measure of whether you can really teach.”

Not only has there been a housecleaning in the teaching staff, but Gompers receives $1.3 million in special funding that allows the school to have 25 teachers above what it normally would be allowed under regular district funding formulas. That money is meant to promote integration, although the number of white students busing to the school has dropped from 325 in 1988 to 204 this year as many white parents pulled out their children because of staff turmoil and the perception that the school’s quality had sharply deteriorated.

Thornton made a rare appearance before the board Tuesday, saying, “We know we still have a long way to go.”

Board member Susan Davis, whose own children attended Gompers when most non-white students were not eligible for the special science classes, said the school still needs to show better results with junior-high-age students.

The evaluation report said that too many junior high students--the overwhelming number of whom are black and Latino, as well as black and Latino high school students, still fail at unacceptable rates.

She quizzed Gompers teachers about whether tutorial and other academic support activities were being better used by students than in past years. Teacher Meyers said he had a “full house” of students at his physics tutorials, and Thornton said that more computer and reading classes had been put into place this year.