An overhaul of Tacoma's middle schools

Tiffani Ried has mixed feelings about big changes coming to her Tacoma middle school this year.

She’s excited about her new principal and the ideas he brings to Stewart Middle School from two of Tacoma’s innovative small high schools, the School of the Arts and the Science and Math Institute.

But the eighth-grader will also miss some Stewart teachers.

“It’s kind of sad that some of them won’t be back,” she said.

Classmate Bre Forrest agrees: “The teachers are not the ones who got the bad grades.”

Starting fresh with new teachers and principals is one of many ideas to boost achievement at Tacoma’s lowest-performing middle schools, where poverty is high and test scores are in the bottom 5 percent statewide.

Also on the menu: longer school days, creative scheduling and new class offerings.

The reforms being launched this year at Stewart, Giaudrone and Jason Lee middle schools, combined with the temporary closure and rebuilding of Hunt, are not meant to be easy. Tacoma Superintendent Art Jarvis has called it “disruptive change.”

The school district made big promises and took part in a competitive process earlier this year to win $11 million in federal grants over three years. That’s more than any other district in the state received under the program.

Only one other school district in Pierce County had a school with test scores low enough to qualify for the money. But Franklin Pierce officials said they didn’t apply because there were too many strings attached.

One of the watchdogs from the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction is Tonya Middling, director for district and school improvement and accountability.

“Tacoma did embrace this,” Middling said, noting that the district is using the grant money to make some of the boldest moves of any school system in the state.

Tacoma officials are aware that the federal cash comes with pressure to perform.

“We are going to be living under a microscope,” said Jon Kellett, principal at Jason Lee.

‘TURNAROUND’ SCHOOLS

Stewart and Giaudrone will see the most radical changes this year, under the federal model chosen by Tacoma. Called “turnaround” schools, they are mandated to replace their principals and at least half their faculty. Tacoma is one of only two districts in the state using the model; the other is Marysville.

While teachers at the turnaround schools weren’t formally laid off, many were forced to seek new assignments elsewhere in the district. Most teachers hired at Stewart and Giaudrone came from other schools in the Tacoma School District; others are new to Tacoma.

Jon Ketler is the new Stewart principal. He founded SOTA and SAMI and will continue to have a hand in running both high schools.

Zeek Edmond, formerly principal at Fawcett Elementary School in Tacoma, has taken the helm at Giaudrone.

Jason Lee, where reforms were already under way before it made the state list of low performers, is being recast as a “transformation” school – a less drastic makeover model. It did not have to jettison half its faculty.

Principal Kellett, who moved to Jason Lee last year from Stadium High School, has been asked to keep working on community partnerships and other ideas already taking hold there.

Hunt, meanwhile, is temporarily closed while it is rebuilt. A new Hunt building – funded by taxes Tacoma voters approved in February – is scheduled to open as early as fall 2014.

District officials promise Hunt will be revitalized both physically and academically. The goal is to attract families to what had been a school with shrinking enrollment.

In the meantime, former Hunt students have been assigned to other middle schools, primarily Truman and Mason.

As the reforms get rolling this year, Stewart, Giaudrone and Jason Lee are looking at new ways to increase learning – and they’re not waiting until September to start. Tiffani Ried, Bre Forrest and some of their classmates spent a week this summer studying marine science in a program offered in cooperation with Metro Parks. The class included two days on a boat in Puget Sound.

Susie Richards, a former middle school teacher who now helps operate Service Education Adventure, which hosted the Tacoma students aboard the MV Indigo, said getting kids out of the classroom helps bring the world alive. Too many students are turned off by science and math, she said.

“If you start out getting kids excited about the wonder of it – how much life there is in a teaspoonful of water – then they’ll want to learn,” she said.

STEWART

Like her daughter Bre, Marie Forrest is sad to see former Stewart teachers forced out. She worries that a huge turnover will be stressful for kids.

“I don’t think teachers have anything to do with kids’ WASL scores,” Marie Forrest said. “Some kids don’t test well. That’s a big point with me.”

Tacoma officials say they’re not gambling on change for the sake of change. Deputy Superintendent Carla Santorno has repeatedly stressed that the school district is using model programs that have stood the tests of time and research at schools across the nation.

At Stewart, the model is called STEM, which stands for science, technology, engineering and math. To that mix, Ketler has added an arts component. He’s calling it a STEAM school.

“It’s about the whole kid,” he said.

In addition to more math and science, there will also be theater and dance.

“I’m excited that Stewart is going to be linked with the School of the Arts and the Science and Math Institute,” said Monique Wells, whose daughter Melissa will be a sixth-grader this year.

She expects Melissa to like the new arts offerings. And she believes a longer school day will work, as long as students are engaged.

“It sounds like changes are coming, so hopefully they will be for the best,” Wells said.

Squeezing in all the extras calls for creative scheduling. At Stewart, the school day will be extended Monday through Thursday by nearly an hour over the standard middle school day; the extra time also means the school’s calendar will vary slightly from other Tacoma schools.

Class scheduling is also different. Instead of having the same six classes daily, a Stewart student might have four classes that meet on Mondays and Wednesdays, and four different classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with another mix on Fridays.

“It gives students the ability to take more electives,” Ketler said.

GIAUDRONE

More options for students will also be available at Giaudrone, said principal Edmond.

He said parents seem to have a favorable impression of the school’s new International Baccalaureate program. IB schools have a global focus. They try to get students to understand a wider world and to see how they fit into it. Giaudrone students will study a second language (either Spanish or French), humanities, science, math, art and more.

Edmond said many parents are familiar with the IB program that has been taught for years at Foss High School.

Giaudrone, like Stewart, will use the four-classes-a-day, every other-day-model. He said it can work well with middle school students.

“It decreases the number of (daily) transitions, and slows the pace down,” he said. And with longer class periods, “classes can be more project-based.”

“For science, you can do a whole lab activity, make a big mess, make your discoveries and predictions, and still clean up and be ready for the next class,” he said.

In humanities classes, there will be more time for debate and discussion.

Giaudrone will also teach study skills and expose students to online information about college as well as visitors from local colleges.

“When we teach them those skills, negotiating their way through high school and higher education becomes easier,” Edmond said.

The school also will have a drama teacher, and may add either a drum line or marching band to its music offerings.

JASON LEE

Students at Jason Lee will see continued emphasis on a nationally recognized program called AVID, which stands for Advancement Via Individual Determination. It teaches students study skills: everything from taking notes to understanding a textbook.

All of Jason Lee’s eighth-graders will take the pre-SAT college exam – a test that’s usually not taken until high school. The goal is to allow them to practice for the SATs at an earlier stage.

“We are trying to prepare students to be successful in high school, with a college focus as they go into high school,” Kellett said.

Jason Lee will also use an alternating schedule to allow for more electives.

The other focus at Jason Lee is on community partnerships. The school will continue its collaboration with the Hilltop Artists program, a private nonprofit group that teaches glass art at the school.

“Art has a profound influence on kids who are not hooked into the mainstream yet,” said program director Kit Evans.

New to Jason Lee this year is a partnership with Allen Renaissance, a nonprofit organization that runs several youth programs in the Hilltop neighborhood near Jason Lee. For more than a decade, the group has operated a successful after-school technology education program for kids, and this year it will come to Jason Lee. Other community partners include Peace Community Center, which provides tutoring and other help, and the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber of Commerce.

‘DIFFERENT ENERGY’

Krestin Bahr is the former principal at Stewart who had to leave the job under the turnaround rules. She now works in the school district central office, overseeing all of Tacoma’s middle schools.

She said she was disappointed to have to leave the school she led for nearly four years. But she’s hopeful for what lies ahead.

She said she feels a “different energy” coming from teachers and administrators surrounding the three schools.

“We want children to be successful,” Bahr said. “We want teachers to be empowered. There’s no room for error. We must improve.”

Although the state OSPI earlier this year approved an initial spending plan for the $11 million over three years, those plans may shift now that principals have been hired to carry out specific ideas. The largest expenditures are planned for the early years of the grant cycle.

The money will hire extra teachers, counselors, and math and literacy coaches. It will pay for summer school and instructional materials, including some computers.

Schools will be accountable not just for test scores, but for other measures of success.

State officials will monitor progress, visiting schools monthly and checking to see if individual schools are meeting 90-day goals, Middling said. They’ll look at factors such as teacher attendance, student discipline rates and truancy.

If schools don’t meet benchmarks, they might be asked to change instructional methods or re-teach material, she said. The idea is to monitor what’s happening throughout the school year – while there’s still time to change direction – rather than waiting until the end of the year.

School districts have been tentatively given the grants for three years, but they must re-apply annually and show they’ve made progress, Middling said.

Evans, from Hilltop Artists, said she wants the schools held accountable for working with families and involving parents and students in decision-making.

School board members have asked whether all the changes are sustainable; in other words, how will the district continue to fund the innovations after the grants dry up in three years?

“We wish we had the money forever,” said Santorno, the deputy superintendent. The district may have to shift funding around later to keep the reforms at these schools in place.

Santorno said the challenge will be to figure out how to take what’s learned in the target middle schools and spread it throughout the district.

“We don’t just want these schools doing well,” she said. “We want the system doing well. We’ve got to figure out a way to do it.”

Debbie Cafazzo: 253-597-8635
debbie.cafazzo@thenewstribune.com