A Close- Up Look At People Who Matter : School Success Seen as Matter of Principal

The kids smile even as Norm Isaacs makes them scatter with the sound of the class bell.

“Let’s go,” said Isaacs, principal at Millikan Middle School. “Let’s not be late. Hurry.”

Isaacs has spent 12 years at the Sherman Oaks school as a counselor, assistant principal and in other posts until he finally earned the top job last Aug. 1. But he spends only about an hour a day in his new office, preferring instead to be out among the students.

“If you’re sitting in your office, they won’t come to you,” Isaacs said. “Some say that as a principal, you should be in your office. That’s wrong.”

At this school of about 2,000 students, Isaacs, a Sherman Oaks resident, can name many of them on sight. He often roams the campus like a campaigner, shaking hands and trading jokes with students, offering praise, taking complaints and inquiring about family, friends and troubles.

“They feel like Dr. Isaacs is their dad,” said Jimmy Rivers, who runs the student assistance program center.

In a gym class, Isaacs asked boys sitting on the asphalt: “How many of you think they can beat me in the mile? You think five of you can beat me?”

The boys smiled and shook their heads no. Isaacs, who sometimes runs with the classes, enters the Los Angeles Marathon every year. He runs about 40 miles a week, and the constant walking through the school adds miles more to his training.

His route takes him back to the classrooms, where he checks in on an algebra class.

“A lot of you said you couldn’t make it, that you couldn’t do it,” Isaacs told the class. “But I’m pleased to say you’re doing remarkably well. You really are working hard.”

The algebra teacher, Alex Michel, was a Millikan student 10 years ago. At the time, Isaacs was a ninth-grade counselor who “cared about us,” Michel said.

“He’s changing this school back to the way it was 10 years ago,” Michel said. “It’s becoming a whole bunch better and I’m glad to be a part of it.”

Before Isaacs, Millikan had four principals in six years. When the post opened again, local Parent-Teacher Assn. members campaigned for him and circulated petitions, but district officials at first said that an in-school promotion was unlikely. But Isaacs was finally promoted.

As principal, he even gets along with the campus teachers union representative.

“It’s actually pretty atypical in union-to-school relationships,” said Brandon Zaslow, a Spanish and English as a second language teacher who represents the teachers union. “It’s a working together, an issue of stepping back from the union-district fights and saying, ‘We’re here together, as a school, and we have to make it work.’ ”

Isaac, who holds doctorates in economics and policymaking, approaches the school and community with the insight of a marketing expert.

Two hundred students who had left for private schools have returned, he said, adding that he wants to make public schools appealing again.

He predicts that last year’s 25% failure rate will be cut to 2% this year.

“This school will be far better than any private school,” Isaacs said. “If we can’t do it here, it can’t be done.”

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