Student Could Use Davis Dollars --and a Desk

The girl with long blond hair had listened in the high school library to California’s governor exhorting students to become teachers. He was dangling incentives worth thousands of dollars. But now, as Gray Davis worked the crowd, she and others confronted him with the No. 1 gripe on many campuses: lousy facilities.

The school’s old and things don’t work, they complained. It’s overcrowded. Some teachers don’t have their own rooms. “I don’t even have a desk in my classroom,” the girl told Davis.

Aides pulled the governor away. This was “off message” from teacher recruitment and inspiring students to excellence. He was running late. Reporters stood nearby, awaiting an “availability.”

I stayed with the girl: Elisabeth Turner, 15, a sophomore.

That’s right, she told me, “four of us don’t have desks in Algebra II.” The class is held in a bungalow, one of the ancient portables behind the main building at C.K. McClatchy High School. One student sits on a chair at a small table. But she and two others are assigned to a low couch.

“It’s in the back of the room and we can’t see well,” she said. “When the teacher writes on the blackboard, we have to stand up. It makes it difficult.”

And, of course, there’s no heat or air conditioning. “There’s some sort of heater in there, but getting it to work is another question.”

After two failed bond issues in recent years, Sacramento schools last fall finally persuaded the required two-thirds majority of voters to approve $195 million in construction bonds. But the money evidently has not reached this school, where students mirror the city’s socioeconomic-ethnic diversity.

Californians will cast ballots March 7 on Prop. 26 to lower the vote requirement for local school bonds to a simple majority. Davis supports the measure. But for him on this day, the dilapidation of schools--so demoralizing to students and teachers--was not in his talking points.

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“What I’m trying to do is get young people to see teaching as a form of public service,” Davis told the 80 students, screened to make sure that each had some interest in teaching. “Think of it as a form of the Peace Corps. This is the way you can give a portion of your life back to the country. . . .

“Then if you want to go on to something else, that’s great. If you want to stay as a teacher, that’s great. I really believe there is no higher cause, no public service that has higher value than to be on the front lines in the classroom.”

And here’s what Davis is offering--assuming the Legislature agrees--for new teachers who commit to working four years in a “low achieving” school: $11,000 for college, a $20,000 teaching fellowship for top college grads, a $2,000 bonus after getting a credential and $30,000 for national board certification. A teacher who hangs in five years also will receive $10,000 toward a home down payment.

The problem is this: California will need 300,000 new teachers over the next 10 years, roughly the present number. There’s huge turnover; half of new teachers quit within five years. There’s such a shortage that 10% of teachers aren’t fully credentialed. In L.A. Unified, it’s 22%; in Compton, 49%. A disproportionate number of uncredentialed teachers work in low-achieving schools.

In all, Davis is committing $250 million for teacher recruitment and training. Separately, he’s proposing $120 million in new scholarships for top high school students, regardless of their career aims.

“I believe every child should reach higher . . . every teacher can be more inspiring . . . every parent can be more engaged,” Davis told the students. “I’m not into mediocrity. Cs don’t make it. You gotta be getting Bs or A’s. . . . Gotta realize life’s a struggle.”

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The library was arranged like a stage set. Books ordinarily stacked neatly on shelves were piled on a long table behind Davis as a TV backdrop. Some students were asked to stand there too. That’s where Elisabeth Turner was.

I asked her whether she wanted to be a teacher. She’s torn between that and politics, the student said. She’s on the county Youth Commission and enjoying it.

But those Davis dollars, indeed, could be an incentive for teaching, she said. Her mother, a nurse, is the sole support of four children. Money’s scarce. One sister already is at city college and another attends Bible school.

Where’s your father? I asked. “He’s in prison,” she said.

Later, I learned she’s an A student and a frequent winner of speech contests.

Elisabeth Turner already knows about life’s struggles and reaching higher. She’s the kind who really could benefit from Davis’ new program. And the kind we need in teaching--or politics.

Meantime, she deserves her own desk in Algebra II.