Samohi Redesign Gets Mixed Reviews

By Ann K. Williams
Staff Writer

June 5 -- Three years after Santa Monica High School was divided into six “houses,” the controversial redesign received mixed reviews from parents and students at last week’s School Board meeting.

Held at Barnum Hall to accommodate the overflow crowd that packed into City Hall last month, the confrontations that shut down the May 18 meeting never materialized following the resignation last week of Principal Ilene Straus, who was seen by many as the force behind the redesign.

In fact, there were many new faces among the 200 parents, students and staff who seemed dwarfed by the cavernous hall during a staid debate that often seemed anti-climactic. When it came time to talk, it became apparent that redesign supporters had rallied the troops and balanced opponents.

A number of prominent parent volunteers turned out to urge skeptics to give redesign a chance to work. They said their children get more contact with teachers and counselors and are more “known” in the smaller house units of 600 students each.

Maria Rodriguez, the parent of a Samohi senior and a community liaison at John Adams Middle School, said that since redesign, the students she shepherded through the middle school are carefully tracked by their new house counselors, who often call her.

“I feel they are going to a safe place,” she said, a sentiment shared by a number of parents who spoke Thursday.

Some students agreed.

“When I got in trouble and I made really bad decisions and I was crying and sad, I went to these people,” said Samohi student Zachary Gaidzik, referring to the house counselors. “I’m grateful for that. Redesign has been successful, at least for me.”

But some felt differently.

“I do everything I feel necessary,” Lori Williams complained, adding, “I still feel the gap.

“The same students are struggling,” she said of students she’s known since her child went to Will Rogers Elementary School. “They’re still falling through the cracks.”

“Is redesign working?” Williams asked. “I really don’t know.”

Some students had similar doubts.

While SAMOHI was “a second home…a sacred space” for Ana G. Jara, she felt there was still “a desperate need for student connection” at the school.

“Redesign is not working for too many students,” Jara said, citing “heightened racial tension escalating to violence” as a sign of failure.

A number of speakers, most of them students, complained of being patronized and ignored by the administration.

The lack of respect for students led them to disrespect the administration’s authority during last year’s lunchtime melee, when a mob of students failed to disperse at the principal’s orders, according to student Kenna Stout. (see story)

Students also complained of teachers who are compelled by the house system to teach subjects they’re not trained for, and of what they say is an unfair tardy policy.

The speakers were responding to a report and recommendations by a committee of administrators and teachers which need to be approved by the board so that the district can apply for more grant money to fund the reform.

The report defined the breakdown into houses at SAMOHI as a “hybrid” between a “large comprehensive” high school and small schools of 400 students, considered the “best practice.”

English Department Chair Rob Thais pointed out that SAMOHI is still a “big school with big school problems” and the “small school culture” where “anybody who sees me, knows me” is an ideal that may not ever exist at the 3,500-student school.

“We can tweak it, but that’s about all we can do,” Thais said, though he added he thinks the reform will make things better.

The committee proposed tutoring classes for struggling students, teaming department chairs with “teacher leaders” to mentor new teachers and reducing class size in ninth and tenth grade English and Geometry classes.

If the district had unlimited resources, the committee would like to see SAMOHI reduced by 1000 students, and two or three separate campuses of 400 students each at separate sites.

The board asked staff to look into the disparity between rising state test scores, which seem to indicate the success of redesign, and falling grade point averages among minority students, which would indicate its failure.

Beyond that, the board accepted the committee’s proposals, though several board members seemed moved by the students’ calls for more respect.

And the committee and the board spent some time indulging in the fantasy of large-scale class size reduction, though all acknowledged the unlikelihood of finding enough money for that dream to come true.