Visitacion Valley Middle School in San Francisco is surrounded by such a dangerous neighborhood that the school has applied for the funding to pay a full-time grief counselor:
Ask an average class how many students have been affected by shootings near their homes, and half the hands go up. One student talks about a cousin recently shot to death. Another speaks of a family member on life support after a drive-by shooting.
So many of the school's 520 students have been touched by recent violence that Principal Jim Dierke now is applying for a most unusual grant -- one to fund a full-time grief counselor...
...More than 80 percent of the students at Visitacion Valley live at or below the poverty level, and almost everyone qualifies for a free lunch. Because of budget problems, the school no longer offers art or basic music classes. A librarian hangs on to a half-time position. A grief counselor would join the growing number of services that Dierke pays for with outside grants...
Visitacion Valley, in the southeast corner of San Francisco, is home to one of the most troubled public-housing complexes in the city and to many working families struggling to make ends meet. The five-block area around the school generates one of the city's highest volumes of emergency police calls - - an average of about 81 each month...
...After a series of shootings in the Bayview district that claimed the lives of eight young people, Dierke became convinced the school needed more counseling help. In January he asked students to practice for a standardized test by writing an essay on safety. The students overwhelmingly told him that they felt safe at school but feared violence outside.
Despite this, Dierke has helped work some magic at the school, which was ordered "reconstituted" under new management in 1991 due to miserable academic ratings. Unconventional tactics were used, such as outside programs to provide social services for the 8% of students who have family members in jail:
Since then, scores have gone up significantly. Truancy is down, with average daily attendance growing to 98.5 percent from 92 percent. The number of students going to Lowell High School, the district's academically selective campus, rose to 26 last year, more than a threefold increase.
An outside program provides a caseworker and social worker to help some of the more than 46 children at the school who have family members in jail. The school has a grant to take students to visit the California Academy of Sciences, the ocean and Golden Gate Park, places many had never seen. It joined with a local senior center to transport students to school sports events...
Despite the new programs, teachers say they see the toll taken by violence. Around Valentine's Day, bright-color hearts festooned the halls, but they were not filled with rhymes for the holiday.
Instead, asked what they would do to make their community safer, students pledged to pick up trash, help out at home and not fight. They wrote on the hearts that they would "stop flattening people's car tires" and "not use weapons to kill people in my community" or "not use guns, knives, etc., to kill people."
Given this, I'm amazed to hear that the school manages to help students prepare for the standardized tests. How difficult must it be to get these kids to focus on those tasks?
Posted by kswygert at March 16, 2004 10:37 AM