The ‘Kid Principals’ of Compton

In her office at Compton’s Bunche Elementary School, Mikara Solomon yanks her hair into a bun. If she left it down, she could march into a high school and pass for an 18-year-old senior. But even with the bun and a beige business suit, she has trouble looking old enough for her job: principal.

“To the extent I can, I work to keep my age a secret,” says Solomon, who just turned 28. “But the good thing about being young and running a school in Compton, of course, is that I’m not the only one.”

Seven tumultuous years of state management have left the Compton Unified School District with a little-noticed byproduct: a group of young, mostly new principals that education experts say is unique in the country.

More than one-third of the city’s 34 elementary, middle and high schools are run by people 40 or under. Three principals--Ron Stamper of Kelly Elementary, Stephen Schatz of Laurel Elementary, and Solomon--have yet to celebrate their 29th birthdays. “They’re babies,” said Lorraine Cervantes, a community activist. “Compton has kid principals.”

The state has made these young hires even as educational trends point to older, more experienced leaders. The average age of principals nationwide is rising, reaching 47.7 in the most recent federal survey, released in 1997.

At the same time, the percentage of principals under 40 has dropped to 9.5%, down from 19% during the 1987-88 school year. In that context, said senior policy analyst Craig Jerald of the Washington, D.C.-based Education Trust, “Compton, at the very least, is really, really unusual. I have never heard of a district having a strategy like that.”

The strategy is a sign of desperation as much as of a desire to energize the schools. Even with its recent gains in facilities and test scores, Compton’s struggles--financial and political chaos followed by a state takeover--are so notorious and its pay so low that recruiting qualified principals remains difficult.

Instead, the state-appointed administrator, Randolph E. Ward, has deliberately lured idealistic and well-educated--if extremely inexperienced--young people from across the country by offering them extraordinary responsibilities.

The result is what one older principal jokingly calls “Randy’s Army”--a close-knit cadre of young administrators who are likely to remain important players in the district long after the state ends its takeover and returns the schools to the locally elected board of education.

Hoping for Leaders Who Are Tough

In part, Ward says, the principals were selected for headstrong qualities in hopes that they will one day provide a buffer against Compton politicians who try to dismantle state reforms.

“We’re trying to insulate the schools from the atmosphere that still is out there in the city,” said Ward, who himself first became a principal, in Long Beach, at 32. “We’ve hired a lot of people who won’t take no for an answer and won’t suffer fools. We’ve hired a lot of people who are young.”

The principals’ youth isn’t the only quality that makes them exotic in Compton. With one exception, all are from somewhere else. Most are bilingual. About half have degrees from out-of-state universities.

Nearly all work long hours and project a missionary zeal that is endearing to their bosses but can be grating on hard-bitten teachers and parents.

“I’m definitely not going to hold my tongue,” said Kendra Nichols, 27, a 1995 Harvard graduate who, as a vice principal at Compton High, is an honorary member of the principals club and a likely candidate for a top job somewhere in the next few years. “We are not from here. We’re not politically connected. We have nothing to lose.”

Most can point to results. Of the 12 schools directed by principals under 40, nine showed gains on the Stanford 9 tests last year.

The second-largest jump in the district--26%--came at Laurel Elementary, where the district’s youngest principal, 27-year-old Schatz, was in his first year. “That’s good, but not good enough,” he said.

Schatz and the other young principals form an unofficial mutual support society, commiserating over the phone, sitting together at district meetings, even playing golf together in a semi-regular Friday afternoon game at the Compton par three.

Some of their families worry about their decision to teach in Compton, or wonder whether they are ready to be principals.

“My relatives were shocked,” said new Kelly Elementary Principal Stamper, 28, a longshoreman’s son from Los Alamitos who attended his 10th high school reunion this year. “It wasn’t that long ago I was in school myself. And to be fair, there are an awful lot of things I still don’t know how to do.”

Most have faced down fierce skeptics. In her second week as a rookie principal at Carver Elementary in January 1996, Cynthia Glover Woods, then 27, was invited to a meeting where an audience of 200 questioned her experience and demanded to know her age.

“I refused to say,” said Woods, now 32 and still directing Carver. “I didn’t feel it was relevant. But many of the same people support us now. And compared to all these new principals, I feel like an old veteran.”

To be sure, the principals still have no shortage of critics who say they are neither old nor solicitous enough. There are no guarantees that the young principals will survive the transfer of the district back to the local school board, a move expected some time next year. One powerful board member is openly skeptical of the newcomers.

“They may be bright, but do they have the experience?” asks Basil Kimbrew, vice president of the board, which has opposed most of the state initiatives. “Some of these principals will probably have to be retrained once we take over.”

Tom Hollister, executive director of the Compton Education Assn., the 1,500-member teachers union, said some of the young principals “are doing nicely, but others don’t treat teachers with enough respect.”

“We’re very concerned about this trend,” he said. “I understand that it’s hard to recruit quality, experienced people to take those positions, but it remains to be seen whether you can do what Dr. Ward has done, which is to bring in smart people and try to train them on the job.”

At Bunche Elementary, a few teachers roll their eyes as Solomon jumps in and out of their classes. She often observes 10 teachers a day, peering through their lesson plans, roaming around the classroom as they teach, and offering a few lessons herself.

“Her tolerance is zero, sometimes less than zero,” said Shatrece Sparks, a third-grade parent who volunteers at the school. “She has made it pretty clear that the school will adjust to her.”

Such high expectations can be traced in part to her parents. Her mother, an Irish American lawyer, and her father, an African American businessman, live in Washington, D.C.

For high school, they sent her to the same private school, National Cathedral, that Vice President Al Gore’s daughters attended. After graduating from the University of Virginia in 1994, Solomon thought she would be a lawyer, but decided to try teaching through Teach for America.

That program, which puts recent college graduates in needy schools for two years, sent her to Compton. Solomon, who is fluent in Spanish, taught a bilingual second-grade course with 36 students. Faye Sarfan, the principal at Mayo Elementary, said the new teacher, while raw, “was a natural--one of the best teachers I’ve ever seen at any age.”

Homesick after two years, Solomon moved back to Washington, where she decided for good that she’d rather run a school than be a lawyer. She enrolled at Columbia University in New York City, earned her master’s degree in education last spring and began looking for a job.

Meanwhile, in Compton, Ward was desperate. A nationwide principal shortage had undermined the district’s recruiting efforts. Diane Robinson, executive director of the Teach for America office in Los Angeles, had taught in Compton, knew both Solomon and Ward, and passed along her resume.

Ward had already promoted two twentysomething Teach for America alumni--Schatz and Compton High Vice Principal Nichols--to administrative jobs. It was a risk, but he made Solomon the third.

Solomon arrived at Bunche Elementary in July. Her ambitions soon could be seen across the campus. She has moved to start a summer school.

After less than three months on duty, she is already applying for grants to turn Bunche into a “dual-language immersion school,” where all students will learn in both English and Spanish. In meetings with grade-school parents, she created a stir by talking about colleges and scholarships.

Her most audacious plan is posted on the sign at the school’s front gate. All Bunche students, it promises, will score above the 60th percentile on the Stanford 9 tests this spring. Such scores, which are well above average, would require some of the strongest student improvements ever seen in California. Most grades on the same tests last year fell around the 30th percentile at Bunche.

“She has the highest expectations of any principal I’ve ever encountered,” said veteran first-grade teacher Eloise White, who counts Solomon as the ninth principal for whom she has worked. “Maybe it’s unrealistic, but I say, more power to her.”

Some teachers have chafed at such pronouncements. One has quit. Solomon, wandering into a special education class, conceded that “I need to work on learning to negotiate. I’m too stubborn sometimes.”

She also has run afoul of the district administration. She learned--the hard way--that she cannot hire teachers all by herself, without a vetting by higher-ups. Solomon also was warned to be more patient with maintenance requests, rather than doing them herself.

“I want so badly for things to be perfect for our children right now,” she says.

The urgency shows. She arrives before 7 a.m. and on many nights stays past 10. Her apartment is essentially unfurnished, with just two cats and a bed.

Her office staff is always reminding her to eat lunch--she sometimes forgets to bring her protein shakes--and sleep more. “Sometimes, I think I’m going to call her mother,” said parent volunteer Sparks.

On a recent day, Solomon spent half an hour studying the budget to find a way to pay for new chairs, before beginning five straight hours of class visits. Starting at 3, she taught in the three-hour after-school program until 6, when she met with parents.

As she observes her teachers’ work, Solomon becomes irritated whenever she sees that students are not engaged. One special education arithmetic unit is so maddeningly numbing that Solomon has to walk out of the room to keep her temper. She often leaves teachers one-page notes that can be brutally frank.

Principal Sets High Standards

“Remember,” she wrote to a kindergarten teacher after observing a listless lesson, “these babies need to be reading by the end of this year.”

Solomon is particularly insistent that every teacher put up a Goal Wall, one of her favorite initiatives. In each classroom, one wall is devoted to a list of each student’s plans for this year (“Read! Read! Read!”), for their careers (there are plenty of aspiring young principals) and for college (Solomon has been pushing Harvard, where the school’s namesake, Nobel laureate Ralph J. Bunche, earned his doctorate).

It is not unusual to see the principal approach a third-grader in the hallway and strike up a conversation about Yale or UCLA.

Among the students, at least, Solomon is already a sensation. They seek her out in her office and in the halls. In the cafeteria, where Solomon has instituted a mandatory napkins-on-every-lap policy, the principal is a frequent topic of lunchtime discussion.

Breana Lofton, 8, said school seems harder this year since Ms. Solomon arrived. “But she also seems very nice. And she has got very pretty hair. It’s not all gray like the teachers’.”