It’s Now a Matter of Principal : Colleagues Followed Different Roads to Their Latest Positions at Venice and Palisades Highs

This is a tale of two principals.

Nearly a quarter of a century ago, Bud Jacobs and Merle Price were young teachers at Fremont High School, full of hopes and ideas for educating urban youngsters. Jacobs chaired the English department; Price was his counterpart down the hall in science.

Public education hasn’t turned out the way they dreamed, but neither gave up or opted out as they wended their separate ways through the ranks. Last month, they coincidentally became fellow principals at two Westside high schools, with Jacobs, 46, at Venice and his old buddy Price, 45, at Palisades High.

Price’s route to the top was traditional: He was chosen by school district officials downtown. By contrast, Jacobs went through a grueling competition conducted by Venice’s school-based management council and became the first principal of a comprehensive high school selected by the local process.

Two weeks into their new jobs, the district’s newest principals talked about where they came from and where they hope to take their respective schools--each pausing momentarily to recall those early years at Fremont.

It has been fun so far. The usually dapper Jacobs showed up without socks for his first post-election meeting with the group who chose him; he found a beribboned pair of socks on his desk the next morning, while one of Price’s first meetings with students dealt with the weighty matter of Pali’s “hat policy” (hats, with their gang connotations, are verboten ).

Price, a native Angeleno who lives in Pacific Palisades (as does Jacobs), came to Pali from Jefferson High School where, as assistant principal since 1989, he was deeply involved in school-based management and teacher training for humanitas programs (a thematic, interdisciplinary curriculum that is the latest wrinkle in education).

Before that, the summa cum laude graduate of UC Santa Barbara in cellular biology, who also holds a master’s from Cal State Los Angeles, worked at Locke High School as assistant principal, administrative dean, dean of students, attendance-student data systems coordinator and teacher-coordinator. Earlier, he had been a teacher and science magnet coordinator at Dodson Junior High.

When former Principal Gerald Dodd unexpectedly retired from Pali this year, Price was hand-picked for the job by district officials, who had watched him in action and had reviewed his performance on a series of promotional exams over the years.

The most striking difference he sees between Pali and Jefferson is “community resources. The educational level of the community and the (economic) resources of its members do help to make up for the difference that exists in programs. Here at Pali we do not have a lot of supplemental funding that addresses at-risk students; yet the kids who ride the bus here (70%) have the same needs as those in the sending communities (in the inner city).”

A few miles south, at Venice, Bud Jacobs makes no comparisons to his former school: He has been assistant principal there since 1986 and is well-known to students, parents, faculty and community.

A Midwesterner who graduated from UC Berkeley and earned a master’s from UCLA, Jacobs has been assistant principal at John Muir Junior High, director of instruction at Bret Harte Intermediate and instructional adviser for the school district’s Region C.

When former Principal Andrea Natker became superintendent of the ABC School District in the South Bay this year, Venice broke new ground in selecting its own new principal. An eight-member committee, including Student Body President Jennifer Pontius, had been drawn from the school-based management council to interview and evaluate six candidates sent by the district, out of a pool of 16 possibilities. The two finalists chosen by the committee went before the council for more questions and a vote.

“This is a first, and there is no guarantee that it’s 100% successful,” said teacher Jim Blackwood, UTLA chapter chair and a member of the selection committee. “But the key thing is that we are in the same ballgame, there is a feeling of commitment, that he is our person, not someone foisted off on us by the downtown administration.

“We chose him because we liked what this person is, going into the job.”

Venice parent David Decker said the selection process was civilized but spirited. “The vote was not unanimous,” he said, but in the end “we felt Bud has the leadership skills to rally the faculty and a ‘right now’ presence in the community.

“But he was no shoo-in,” Decker said. “He had to earn it.”

Jacobs says the biggest problem he faces at Venice is “trying to make what I consider the best-kept secret on the Westside not so secret, to restore confidence” in a school shaken by negative publicity over drive-by shootings.

“We raised $200,000 in college scholarships for our kids last year, we have 400 state-identified gifted students, and we offer 20 advanced placement and honors classes, nine languages (including Latin) and more extracurricular activities than any school on the Westside. Even golf.

“Yet we have this negative image from the beach, as though we are all skateboarders and body-builders and hippies,” Jacobs said. “This is an artistic community, and that’s one of the things we want to build on.”

Back at Pali, the most pressing problems for Price are large class sizes, (“We have 45 in honors chemistry and we don’t even have 45 lab stations”), the need to develop programs for students who come by bus and better integration.

“We have high-potential (bused) kids who are not performing up to their abilities, and we need to develop better ways of reaching them, getting them into honors or advanced placement, extra counseling, new ways of delivering information.

“We also need to better integrate the traveling student with neighborhood students, both in classroom and extracurricular programs,” he said. “One asset we have is that the community and staff are both committed to this and seeking resources and programs. We may have a stereotype as an elitist West L.A. community but . . . “

One objective of Pali’s new $75,000 media center, Price noted, is to bring a diverse student population into a setting where it can get hands-on experience in setting up radio broadcast and videotape studios. The journalism program will be expanded to involve speech and theater arts and English-as-a-Second-Language students in translating and dubbing. “It will be an integrated effort,” he said.

Price says the current budget situation “has made it more challenging for everyone,” but salary cuts are certain to undermine morale. “I’m impressed by the level of commitment to the school, the kids and the community our teachers have, and I’m counting on that to get us through,” he said. So far, all extracurricular programs are running as usual, he said, but some teachers who are loyal to the teachers’ union may have to make painful personal decisions.

Like many of his colleagues, Price says the only way to move the school forward in recessionary times is “to get funded by a grant or engage in fund-raising activities.”

Calling traditional high school classes “outdated factory models where teachers and classrooms are isolated,” Price said he hopes to expand Pali’s fledgling humanitas program, which links subjects by a thematic approach and team teaching. “Kids now move from subject to subject in 50-minute increments, and we expect them to come out and be able to solve real world problems.”

With four new teachers and three teaching vacancies in the process of being filled, he is beating the bushes for money to buy time for professional development for the faculty.

There is also talk of opening a magnet school at Pali, although district policy frowns on more magnets in white neighborhoods, and it would cost extra money. “We want to pursue that option,” Price said “because it improves our ability to draw students to a school that is underutilized. We have a 2,440 capacity, so there is room for 800 more students.” More minority students cannot be bused in under district formulas, because the school has already reached its 70% minority limit.

At Venice, Jacobs too wants to connect the curriculum through the humanitas approach, as well as develop community service programs and programs that take advantage of the artistic community surrounding the school and make the arts a flourishing part of its offerings.

He has hired 14 new teachers, most of them recent college graduates, to offset a spate of retirements. Price said he does not expect to have to make major changes as the district implements a plan to equalize spending among schools over the next five years. He said he believes Westside schools could actually benefit by receiving lump sums to allocate as they see fit, “unless the resources go so far down that there is nothing much to allocate.”

Both principals say their schools have few problems with weapons, gangs or drugs on campus.

Jacobs said Venice recently closed the street behind the school to traffic in order to prevent drive-bys; has added campus security; does not allow gang displays, and plans to install tennis-type screens to enable students to concentrate on what is happening inside, not outside school. Members of rival gangs do not attend Venice, he said, but there have been several incidents involving outsiders. At Palisades too, Price said, there have been “trespassers” on campus but no gang rumbles.

At the first sign of gang affiliation, Jacobs said, students are summoned to the office: “They have to make a choice. If the gang, not school, is the most important thing to them, we make clear that we are going to remove them.”

Asked what he would say to a Westside parent who is fed up and thinking of transferring his child to a private school, Price said he would point out that “the quality of instruction is not measured by ethnic composition, but by exposure to critical thinking skills. Our kids not only matriculate to UC and other prestigious universities, but they have as high scores as any private school in honors and advanced placement. And with that given, unless your child is going to move to a remote island, he will have to live in the real multiethnic world and the experience of interacting with kids from various backgrounds have to be a benefit in the long run. What better lab in which to train future leaders?”

Academically, he said, after examining test scores and college acceptances, “I am confident we can provide a quality instructional program, along with extracurricular activities, ranging from sports to the academic decathlon.”

Jacobs said the Venice community is naturally integrated and “more into public schools. . . . I believe the academic opportunities here are as great as anywhere--no way is there a better science department elsewhere. And the social experience outweighs the private school experience: Kids learn from each other about each other.”

However, Jacobs does not fully practice what he preaches. His two daughters attended Crossroads, a private school where his wife is elementary assistant director. “We have a running debate in our home,” he said.

Price said he wants to be known as “energetic, accessible, visible, open, committed to educational excellence. And my wife (a former teacher turned lawyer) says to add ‘hard working.’ I can compromise on anything, but not on quality outcome.”

Jacobs suggested “personable, non-confrontational, organized, I think I’m effective, I think people enjoy working with me. My strong PR skills with the community and parents should help me hold things together in a difficult year.”

Outside the classroom, Price likes to hike, garden, and read biographies, most recently one about Napoleon, sparked by a recent trip to France. Jacobs jogs daily, travels, reads Kurt Vonnegut’s novels and is active in community groups, such as Palisades Parents Together.

They like to talk about the successes of students they taught 20 years ago, a perspective that keeps them going. And they relish the idea of being friendly competitors.

Noting that in last year’s academic decathlon, Venice finished fourth and Pali fifth, Jacobs proposes a little bet. “If Merle wants to bet a Pali (a sandwich) at Mort’s (a popular Palisades deli) on this year’s outcome . . . “