Wind rips through the Wednesday morning air like a bullet, slicing through jackets and attacking the uncovered ears of Booker Elementary students standing outside in nearly a dozen single-file lines, awaiting the start of their daily morning "exercise." As kids who live nearby walk through the field to the playground and those dropped off by parents hustle into lines grouped by age and grade—youngest to the far left, oldest to the far right—a janitor wheels out a large, nightclub-worthy speaker that easily dwarfs most of the campus' 442 students.
He presses "play" and R. Kelly's Grammy-winning voice booms out, serenading the surrounding blocks: "I believe I can fly ... I believe I can touch the sky ... I think about it every night and day ... spread my wings and fly away."
It's 8:40 in the morning.
The music is audible from the McDonald's several blocks south on Lake Mead, to the Clark County Community Resource Center three blocks north on Carey. Catching the full brunt of the sound are the fairly new apartments and affordable homes south of the school, on the site of the razed Herbert Gerson housing projects, once the city's most treacherous neighborhood (home to the Gerson Park Kingsmen gang), and the fenced apartments directly north on Carey and Martin Luther King, which house the rival Rollin' 60s Crips. Emerging from a minimart on Carey and MLK, a crew of kids who look like they're in middle school stop and listen for a minute, as do a few loitering adults palming cans of beer.
Think of the music as a boom-box alarm clock, an urban rooster crow, rousing slumbering students (and parents) and signaling the start of another school day at Booker. Mornings here begin with Kelly singing, followed by the pledge of allegiance and activities meant to wake up their brains and bodies, including a cute call-and-response exercise in which they tap different parts of their head, patty-cake style. When Principal Beverly Mathis introduced the musical wake-up call years ago, miffed neighbors complained to her, the school district, then to the police. Looking back, she says, the move took guts. Some of the neighbors weren't the type of people you'd normally like to piss off. "But when the kids heard the music," she says, burrowing deeper into her thick jacket to blunt the morning chill, "they would get up and come to school."
Getting kids to come to Booker was half the battle. The far tougher fight: creating a learning environment in a place politely described as "chaotic." Standardized test scores were among the worst in Nevada. And parent involvement? What parent involvement? Booker was viewed as a scholastic ghetto surrounded by a real ghetto. What few realized a decade ago, Mathis says, "was that we were teaching kids who had a lot on their minds."
Parents in jail for drug trafficking or awaiting trial. Homes overrun by maggots. Having to sleep on the floors because of the nightly volley of gunfire between rival gangs. Households lacking food, hygiene products and detergent—upwards of 90 percent of students' families met the federal poverty criteria. Two, three and four families bunking under one roof. Elder siblings routinely assuming parental responsibilities—grocery shopping, paying bills, baby-sitting.
Nothing Mathis had learned in college education classes prepared her to deal with kids who spoke better with their fists than their mouths; for parents whose voices seemed stuck in yell mode; for homeless people sleeping in the courtyard and shaking down her teachers for cigarettes; for the naked, shotgun-wielding man roaming the school yard in a particularly memorable incident; for occasional flying bullets; for the nearly omnipresent crime—bad when she came 11 years ago, the surrounding area is still troubled; in March 2003 alone, there were 39 business burglaries, 44 robberies, 97 residential burglaries and 126 car thefts in the vicinity of the school.
Looking back, Booker had every reason to fail. It didn't and hasn't. It's becoming a place where parents want their kids to go, a school that's attracted support from some of the city's influential people and biggest businesses, an environment where learning is not an option. A turnaround story on par with the movie Lean on Me.
Some have even given Booker a new nickname: the Miracle on Martin Luther King.
"Public school works, and this is one public school that definitely works."
If you didn't know Beverly Mathis, you might mistake her confidence for arrogance. For so long, Booker has epitomized what's wrong with public schools—subpar parental support, poor facilities, ill-equipped kids, a faculty that spends more time disciplining than teaching. So the words coming out of Mathis' mouth aren't so much celebratory as they are a sigh of relief.
"We still have a ways to go," she says. "It's a constant struggle, given that we often get students that aren't prepared to learn."
To know how far the school has come, you've got to understand the deficit Mathis inherited when she came in 1993. Booker was one of the worst-performing elementary schools in Nevada; its fourth-graders scored in the bottom quartile of students on standardized reading and math tests. The 1997 Nevada Education Reform Act, considered a precursor to No Child Left Behind because it mandated adequate yearly progress (AYP) for underperforming schools, didn't make things any better. The law created a system in which schools failing to meet AYP get placed on the "needs improvement" list—a school makes the list if 40 percent of students score in the bottom quartile on standardized reading and math tests. After three consecutive years on the list, the state Education Department can take over the school, tossing out all the administrators, principal included. Booker made the list two consecutive years (1998, 1999).
Booker avoided a third year largely because seeds Mathis and her faculty planted in '96 were beginning to sprout.
That year, the school became one of the first in Nevada to receive federal funding for Title I programs; the money was used to set up classes for 3- and 4-year-olds, as well as implement a full-day kindergarten. The point: to stress the importance of education as early as possible. At the time, recalls counselor Julie Chartres, "some fifth-graders couldn't spell their names. Nine years later, the programs are strong as ever. In one class, 3-year-olds recite the pledge of allegiance by themselves. In another, 4-year-olds engaged in quiet reading time. Kindergartners in another class have their heads in books.
Also in 1996, Mathis began cautioning educators against overvaluing test scores. Test performance shouldn't be inextricably linked with intellect and potential, she told members of a political panel during a local forum in which then-first lady Hillary Clinton talked about welfare and children's issues. "How do you compare the accomplishments of a 10-year-old who's never owned a book, never been read to by a parent and may be malnourished, to those of a student who doesn't yet know that children like that exist?" she was quoted as saying in the Las Vegas Sun. She talked about how getting parents, civic groups and businesses involved at Booker had helped increase test scores and behavior. Her students weren't "at risk," she said, they were "at promise." In 1997, Booker became one of the first schools to adopt a peer-mediation program. Students go through hours of training that allows them to referee disputes between kids. Fighting decreased.
In 2000, Booker's fourth-graders passed and the school got off the "watch" list. Mathis retested them to make sure there were no mistakes. There weren't. The next three years yielded similar results. "Now the word is, you have a child with problems," Mathis says, laughing, "send them to Booker."
Even though No Child Left Behind, with its 135 categories (fall short in one and onto the list you go), spoiled the four-year run—Booker was one of six campuses that made the "watch" list, solely because of low scores by special-needs students—Mathis says the controversial federal law has had a positive impact because it doesn't allow room for excuses. "We can't have the rules changed just because we're black," she says. "When these kids leave Booker, I want them able to compete with students all over the world. I know it's not going to be easy, but whoever said it was?" She's confident the special-needs students will meet the standards.
Clearly more nerve-racking than NCLB is Booker's recent selection as the lone school to participate in a test administered by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which puts out a congressionally mandated report card on student comprehension. Schools don't get to see test results. Scores are used to benchmark a state's prowess. The test is set for Monday. A lot is riding on Booker. "Now that," she says, "is pressure."
"You want to know our secret?" Mathis asks. "You're looking at it."
It's 9:30 a.m. and first-graders in Mattie McTear's class have been reading for the past 40 minutes. Their concentration is impressive. This is part of the Success For All program in action. Used throughout the district, the federally funded program is all about improving reading. The signature component is a daily 90-minute, uninterrupted reading period.
In class after class on a Tuesday morning, it was all about reading. Mathis points out second-graders reading at sixth-grade level, first-graders comprehending at fourth-grade level, third-graders handling books meant for fifth-graders.
Even the youngest kids get immersed in reading concepts. Over in Nina Hooks' class, 3-year-olds are identifying the days on the calendar and what holidays are associated with what month. When it comes time to recite the pledge of allegiance, they do it without Hooks' help.
Prizes await the most avid bookworms: gift certificates to Borders Books. On Saturdays, faculty take the winners to the store to redeem the certificates.
Hollywood abounds in stories of grit-tough educators resurrecting chaotic schools. Lean on Me profiled bat- and bullhorn-wielding principal Joe Clark's work at a New Jersey high school. Coach Carter dramatizes Ken Carter's rekindling of the Richmond High hoop squad.
Mathis is Joe Clark without the gruff edges, Coach Carter minus the drill-sergeant demeanor. "Be kind and work hard" and "stay focused," she always tells students.
Dodging rainwater cascading off the roof, she approaches two roaming Hispanic students. "Where are you supposed to be?"
It's a rhetorical question. With only 442 students, small by comparison (enrollment at some Valley elementaries tops 1,000), Mathis generally knows where students should be. She also knows a lot about the students themselves and can often tell you about their families and home life.
Now, Mathis and three other Booker officials are sitting at a conference room across the hall from her office, recalling the school's transformation. Mathis' first year as principal was harrowing. "Many of the parents were confrontational, which rubbed off on the children," Mathis says. "A lot of the children didn't get along. They were related, cousins, and living in the same home. The altercations they had at home, they often brought to school."
So Mathis established rules of student engagement: No more calling each other "n--ga." No more yo-mama jokes. No more calling peers "stupid." Hoping to reinforce the manners taught during school and to establish relationships with parents, teachers began making home visits. Mathis spent lots of time in the Herbert Gerson projects, often going alone because her daughter was too fearful.
Between 5:30 and 6 p.m., she'd hand out business cards with her name, title and the time for school lunch to parents, adults, even groups of men playing cards—she was careful not to disrupt their games. While kids would chat her up, the adults offered terse, one-word answers and weren't especially helpful. One day, she noticed four kids playing basketball on top of the school. They refused her request to come down, so she asked a neighborhood resident if he could assist. "He said, 'They ain't doing nothing wrong. ... I don't know those children ... children will kill you these days.'"
At school, Mathis wore her principal's title like a Kevlar vest. If you didn't belong on campus, she'd tell you to get lost, and not always that nicely. "The safety of my kids is top priority," she says. She was all ready to berate a man sauntering across the campus one day when a kid named Brandon, a subpar student who nonetheless had a high street IQ, advised against it. "The cops later told me he was a gang leader and that Brandon was right—he wasn't somebody to mess with," Mathis says. "Coming from Tennessee, I used to read about all these situations that I never thought I'd be in. In my first year at Booker, I was in some of those situations. Brandon saved my life."
Mathis has stories: The boy who couldn't focus because he thought the gangsters who shot up his house the night before had returned and killed his grandmother (they didn't). The boy who shot his sibling because voices in his head told him to. The boy who said he wanted to go to jail because his father was there. Hit by a car while crossing the street in October, 7-year-old Janicia Baker was back in school this month. "We've got some of the toughest kids in America right here at Booker," she says. "They're survivors."
Asked what the school was like when she arrived 13 years ago, Jeannie Scurlock, a learning strategist and for Success For All facilitator, rolls her eyes: "You had to hold onto your seat. There weren't many bad kids, but the few that there were, were terrible." Would the quiet, respectful teaching environment of today been impossible a decade ago? "Don't even think about it."
All the student behavioral modification, home visits and pep talks couldn't alter the blunt reality that Booker could often be a dangerous place to teach. On various occasions, the school would be locked down—children kept inside locked classrooms—because violence erupted on or near campus. Counselor Julie Chartres recalls that during her second year, around lunchtime one day, with students headed to the cafeteria, gang members drove by and began spraying bullets. The targets, a handful of visiting parents who belonged to a rival set, retrieved weapons and returned fire. No one was hit, The teachers, too shocked to react, remained standing. The students hit the deck; many of them had been through this before. "It's weird, but the gang takes precedence over everything, even their kids," Chartres says.
That's why Booker's new facility, a 62,200-square-foot campus slated to open for the 2005-06 academic year, will have features designed specifically for ensuring safety. Ten students worked with architects on the design.
"We can't change what goes on outside Booker," Mathis says, "but we can change what goes on inside."
The African adage "It takes a village to raise a child" is depicted several places throughout the school—the entrance, the cafeteria—and routinely spills forth from Mathis' lips. Booker's village includes an expanding network of civic groups and professionals. This Wednesday morning, Mathis retrieves Fitzgerald hotel-casino employees from the office and takes them to classes where they'll assist in math. Students greet them by name. Horace Bowers is excited about tomorrow's guest to his fourth-grade class: young lawyers who'll present a case for them to solve. Civic groups like The Links and casinos such as the Paris have lent support. TRW Environmental Safety Systems, a $12 billion company with local operations, included Booker as one of 30 schools nationwide to take part in a $250,000 grant meant to help teach 3- and 4-year-olds how to use movement to improve cognition. Everywhere Mathis turns, someone is willing to help.
Also aiding the village concept is a staff that's one of longest-tenured in town. Administrators and teachers have been there for eight, 11, 13 years. At 33 years, Mattie McTear has been at Booker the longest, starting when it was Highland Elementary.
Meanwhile, Scurlock drives in from Interstate 215 and Eastern Avenue each morning. "We could go anywhere else, but we're here because we want to be," she says, noting that Booker hasn't had any new teachers in quite a while. "It lets parents know that we're in this for the long haul, that we care, and it also brings consistency and stability, things some kids don't have at home."
Observing fifth-grade teacher Penny Howell-Fuller, you sense she's the kind of instructor made for tough schools. Hers is an outsize personality, the accent all Brooklyn, where she taught for 11 years. She followed her parents out here and landed at Booker nine years ago. Used to working in hardscrabble schools with hardened children, she was nonetheless shocked by the poverty surrounding the school. "Many of these families were dirt poor," she says.
Howell-Fuller has a way with her students. In the course of two minutes she goes from mother hen—effusively congratulating a boy for a right answer—to lioness; she's told the class to be quiet three times, which is two too many. Today's topic: Martin Luther King Jr. Her fifth-graders are about to watch a documentary on King's life. They learn that King was 26 when he led the Montgomery bus boycott. She asks: "How many of you know a 26-year-old that's not doing too well?"
Hands shoot up. "My cousin." "My uncle." More than just school curriculum is taught at Booker, Howell-Fuller says. Teachers encourage students to not be defined by their situations.
Over on the other side of the school, Gabriel Ngadiupa is patrolling a second-grade class, offering help when he can, providing a positive male presence. Ngadiupa is part of the school's foster grandparent program, sponsored by the Economic Opportunity Board, which pairs civic-minded seniors with schools. Moving from Nigeria to Las Vegas to be closer to his sons, Ngadiupa wanted to busy himself doing something positive. He says the kids make him feel young again. This is his second year with the program. "He's like the grandpa some of them never had," notes one teacher.
Barbara Carter is Shyanne Carter-Wade's grandmother. She wouldn't think of enrolling the second-grader in another school because few people campaign as tirelessly for their students as Mathis (in 2000, she received $25,000 from the Milken Family Foundation, one of 145 educators recognized nationally), few faculties work as hard to keep parents involved and informed, few schools have the bevy of activities (literacy nights, carnivals, field trips, restaurant outings, pizza parties for attendance) that Booker does. "Shyanne loves this school," Carter says. "I love Mrs. Mathis."
Mathis is quick to give credit to the one group that's shown the most improvement, the group she says are most vital in a child's education: parents. Time was, Booker couldn't afford the start-up fees to establish a parent-teacher organization. Now, she can't keep parents at bay.
James Cole wouldn't send his five sons anywhere else. Cole is among an active base of involved fathers. Early in Mathis' tenure, active families were an anomaly. She had to rename a father-son banquet to the Gents and Lads banquet and recruit community-minded men as mentors because only seven fathers agreed to help. Cole is here this Wednesday to talk with Mathis about his son Lajuan, a 10-year-old fifth-grader recently suspended for fighting.
Mathis: "What will get you kicked out of here faster than anything?"
Lajuan: "Fighting."
Mathis: "We know that we can fight, we don't have to prove that. What do we have to prove? We have to use our what? Our what? Look at me."
Lajuan (mumbling): "Our brain."
His father prompts Lajuan to sit up straight.
Mathis counsels him on what he could have done differently (tell the teacher, tell the principal—"that doesn't make you a tattletale. I know your mom and dad didn't send you to school get pushed around."). The suspension ruined his record of perfect attendance. Turns out the fight started over candy. He'll use his head next time.
Dad's turn: "It's better to be a leader than a follower. He knows that."
Cole says Booker is the best thing for his kids. "The key here is that the teachers and the principals really show that they care about the kids," he says. "I think things will get even better when [the new school is built]."
The morning exercise is over and Mathis' day is about to kick into high gear. She's a ball of energy, visiting as many classrooms as she can, talking with teachers about a particular student, scolding kids for lollygagging in the hallways (no student travels anywhere alone on campus), planning for an upcoming staff development day and worrying about proficiency exams, which are coming up near the end of January. She and her staff have worked hard to make Booker a proud school, and she knows that, like it or not, they'll be judged on the proficiency exam scores and few observers will take into consideration that, the night before, a student may have ducked bullets or went to bed hungry. Mathis doesn't lament reality. She chose to be here, wants to be here.
"We're not done by a long shot," she says. 'We still have work to do."