Taught to be principals

By Sanjay Bhatt
Seattle Times staff reporter

Veronica Gallardo is Wedgwood Elementary's new principal.

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"My time is already taking quite a beating with my own family," said Gallardo, a Yakima Valley native and former Northshore School District sixth-grade teacher. "I do have principals who have slipped me a business card and put their home number on the back and said, 'Call me anytime you have a question.' "

Today, as 47,000 Seattle Public Schools students begin the 2004-05 school year, Gallardo and 28 other newly appointed principals will be starting afresh as well. Many have been groomed from within, either as assistant principals or like Gallardo as principal interns through the University of Washington's Danforth Educational Leadership Program.

Nearly all of the Seattle district's new principals are in elementary schools, and for about a dozen, it's their first stint as a principal.

"This corps of new administrators is undoubtedly the best corps I've ever seen in one swoop," said Chief Academic Officer Steve Wilson.

But the rookies will need to prove themselves over three years in order to obtain tenure.

Those enrolled in the UW's Danforth program may have an edge: The program has interns shadow veteran principals for an entire school year, and a UW study published last year concluded that such hands-on experience is more effective than a focus on classroom theory.

A principal juggles academics, building safety, school budgets and a seemingly endless list of other issues. But Wilson says he's been direct with Seattle's principals on his priorities.

"The number one responsibility of any principal is to establish a safe, positive climate where teachers can teach to their max and students can learn to their max," Wilson said. "The second part is academic achievement. They've got to be visible in the classrooms and communicate with teachers on a consistent basis. The third one is they've got to involve the community."

The central office and her peers have been very supportive, Gallardo said. "For a first-year person, that's a good feeling."

Here's a quick glimpse at some of Seattle's other new principals:

At Thurgood Marshall Elementary, Principal Winifred Todd is trying to diagnose why the African-American boys don't perform as well as the girls on state tests. The school is tucked into the city's Central Area. Ninety-five percent of its 350 students are nonwhite and 85 percent are eligible for subsidized school meals, which essentially means they live in poverty.

The school's hallways and rooms are brightly lit, places that are "a beacon of hope" for hundreds of children, said Todd, who was the interim principal last year.

This year, she's focused on improving her teachers' effectiveness. She wants to increase the time students spend on math and reading. She's adamant that her teachers keep their expectations high of each child's potential.

Todd is continuing a key change implemented by her predecessor: segregating boys from girls in most classes. The school is joining a national study of single-sex education, which could help Todd solve the puzzle of why boys turn in poorer performance on certain tests.

	STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES Ed Noh, starting his first year as principal at Lawton Elementary in Seattle's Magnolia neighborhood, reflects on the challenges ahead. He brings a background in training math teachers in the Bellevue School District.

Ed Noh brings to Lawton Elementary his background in training math teachers in the Bellevue School District. There he served on a districtwide team that launched a new math curriculum in a program funded by the National Science Foundation.

The school, which is in Seattle's Magnolia neighborhood, has a very different student composition from Thurgood Marshall: Seventy percent of Lawton's students are white and only about 13 percent are low-income. But Noh has worked in other settings, including as an assistant principal at Madison Middle School last spring and as a teacher in San Francisco and the New York area.

He entered the UW's one-year Danforth program and did a principal internship at the John Stanford International School. That school has a language-immersion program, which Noh could easily grasp, having taught kindergarten in Tokyo.

This fall Lawton enters the final year of a transformation plan with a heavy focus on math. Noh aims to make sure all teachers are using a well-defined K-5 curriculum. First-grade teachers will understand how their lessons give students the building blocks to succeed in second grade and so on.

"We've got to serve the individual child, and as long as we do that, I think we'll be OK," Noh said.

	ALAN BERNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES Patricia McLean, Alki Elementary's new principal, came to the Seattle School District from Bellevue and the UW's Danforth program.

Patricia McLean, Alki Elementary's new principal, also came to the Seattle School District from Bellevue and the UW's Danforth program.

Alki Elementary, perched near the northern tip of West Seattle, enrolls more than 300 students; nearly a half are low-income and about a half are nonwhite.

This year, McLean said she will oversee the introduction of a more intense special-education program, help teachers with improving math instruction and examine ways to better serve bilingual students' needs.

About 60 students are English language learners, many of them Vietnamese and Somali. "I'm here to be an instructional leader," McLean said. "I want to be in the classroom a lot."

She co-founded the Bellevue International School, which at the time was the first of its kind in the Puget Sound area. The secondary school requires students to study a single language, plus math and science for seven years. She acknowledges that she'll be making a transition from secondary to elementary school.

In the days leading up to school opening today, McLean has been meeting with staff and learning more about the curriculum.

"I'm going to make mistakes. I'm learning."

Sanjay Bhatt: 206-464-3103 or sbhatt@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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