Linking School to Work

The newest public school in this boom-and-bust oil town is not on the growing white-collar fringe but right downtown, a block from a hotel for state prison parolees, four pawnshops and an arcade that advertises 25-cent porno reels.

But the Downtown Elementary School is also close to the hospitals, offices and shops that draw a work force of attorneys, clerks and others. In fact, the school was built for those commuters who want to have their children nearby.

The school, which favors downtown workers over residents, is the most popular in town, with a waiting list that numbers well over 100.

“This is as good as it gets,” said Roxan Joyner, a Sheriff’s Department clerk whose 6-year-old daughter, Kelly Jo, is a Downtown first grader. Joyner works two blocks away, close enough to pop over for lunch, a class party or to peek in on a lesson.

The school was created in response to a survey of the 20 largest employers in Bakersfield’s somewhat frayed center that found 80% of employees with young children would enroll them in a nearby public school if it offered child care.

Kelly F. Blanton, the Kern County superintendent of schools, offered to build such a school with the proceeds from a real estate deal. The campus, which cost $3.6 million including the land, was dedicated a year ago and already has the highest test scores in the city. Blanton leases the school to the Bakersfield City School District, which operates it.

The school quickly reached its maximum enrollment of 160 after opening last fall. Half of the students came from the surrounding suburbs, officials said, and about 10% transferred from private schools. The rest are local children whose parents work downtown.

Blanton said it is critical for public schools to adjust to the changing needs of families if they are to succeed in the face of growing competition. Charter schools are multiplying nationally, and pressure is growing to allow parents to use public funds to send their children to private schools.

Public education must “fit the system to people’s needs,” Blanton said. “One size does not fit all.”

“If you step back a minute and say, ‘What do we really need?’ there are solutions,” said Blanton, who has gained a statewide reputation as an innovator. “This wasn’t hard. It was a little complicated and different but it wasn’t hard.”

What it required, however, was a reexamination of the normal practice of locating schools only in residential neighborhoods. For previous generations, when most mothers did not work, that made sense. These days, however, it might make it easier for parents to be active in their children’s education if schools were near large employers.

Paul Hill, a professor of public affairs at the University of Washington, said schools that were created to serve commuters rather than residents exist in Dallas and Dade County, Fla. But the customer-oriented spirit that led to the creation of Downtown Elementary is typically disdained in public education.

In private business, Hill said, “good operators try to be good performers and generate loyalty” and the same philosophy can benefit public schools. “It’s a sickness that’s led us to think that public schools, in order to be public, have to be unresponsive.”

Certainly Downtown Elementary has tried to be responsive to its customers.

‘Read, Read, Read’

To serve the needs of parents who work early shifts, the school’s day-care program opens at 6:45 a.m. Joyner, who had Kelly Jo in a $300-a-month private school before enrolling her here, is among the first to show up. She gushes at her good fortune in getting in.

“She’s right there, she’s not 30 minutes away,” Joyner said, while settling her daughter in with crayons and a coloring book.

But location wouldn’t matter, she said, if the school did not succeed academically. “This school focuses on her reading. Read, read, read, that’s all there is.”

Kristen Koerner feels the same way. A buyer for the county, she said her son, Shaun, is already beginning to read, can count almost to 100 and do some addition even though he is in kindergarten.

“It’s just phenomenal what he’s learning,” she said. “It’s like a private school but it’s public. It’s absolutely wonderful.”

One of Downtown’s advantages is its size. With only 160 students, Principal Angie Paquette knows almost all of the students and their parents by name.

But, more important, she has studied the results of diagnostic tests taken by every student and discussed their progress with their teachers. That analysis was the basis for assigning them to reading groups with other students at their level. “We kind of know where the holes and gaps are,” she said.

Almost all of the students participate in the after-school day-care program, where tutors help those who fall behind. After they finish their homework, the children rotate through classes in drama, art, dance and choral music and--for a small extra fee--piano or martial arts.

“What we’ve said to parents is we know that you work all week and can’t get to the lessons or whatnot and we know that you want them enriched,” Paquette said.

Because of its downtown location, the campus was designed with security in mind. The entire campus is visible from the windows of each classroom and is surrounded by an 8-foot-high wrought iron fence made without footholds to deter climbing.

During school hours, the only entrance is through the office, past the watchful eye of the office manager.

The school’s popularity is creating pressure to expand but that may be difficult. The school now goes through the fourth grade and next year will add three portable classrooms for fifth-graders on what is the school’s parking lot.

Beyond that, the only direction in which the campus can grow is toward the adult film business and hotel, and state law requires schools to maintain their distance from such enterprises.

Challenges of Location

Indeed, a lack of space and the cost of commercial real estate in city centers might make it difficult to replicate the school elsewhere. Although many cities have vacant offices that could be renovated, any space converted to school use would have to comply with stringent earthquake safety codes. The state also requires a minimum amount of playground space.

But Bakersfield city Supt. John C. Bernard said it is in the interest of urban school districts to find a way around such problems in part because it will help them win back middle-class parents.

About 80% of the district’s 27,000 students are considered poor under federal guidelines but only 40% of the students at Downtown Elementary are in that category.

“We’re attracting kids who weren’t even part of our district,” he said.

Based on Downtown’s success, Blanton says large employers should work with school districts to create small on-site schools to serve their employees’ children. “What would that do to employee satisfaction, retention and absenteeism?”

To see the benefits of such arrangements, one need only visit Downtown’s campus at lunchtime. One day recently, four fathers and two mothers dropped by for a meal featuring creamed turkey and mashed potatoes. Afterward, one father was playing tetherball, another was quarterbacking a team of two in a football scrimmage, a third, wearing a suit, was turning a jump rope and Jim Darling, a publicist with offices downtown, was wiping away the tears of his daughter, who had scraped her knee.

“This is where public education should be headed,” he said.