Being a public high school principal must be one of the toughest
jobs on the planet. After all, a principal has multiple
constituencies to please
– school board trustees, parents, administrators, teachers,
taxpayers and students – and their agendas are rarely
identical.
Being a public high school principal must be one of the toughest jobs on the planet. After all, a principal has multiple constituencies to please – school board trustees, parents, administrators, teachers, taxpayers and students – and their agendas are rarely identical. Especially here in California, we ask public schools to take a widely diverse set of students and produce educated adults on a tight budget.
High school students are in the throes of adolescence, which brings additional challenges to the task of getting them to show up and participate in their own educations.
As Gilroy High School principal Bob Bravo enters his third year of heading Gilroy High School, it’s an appropriate time to review how well he’s handled this admittedly difficult job.
We give Bravo high marks for continuing to show up every day to face this challenge that was made more difficult by the circumstances surrounding the departure of his predecessor. It’s a challenge that would have sent many people running for the exit already.
Bravo’s most significant achievement thus far has been restoring and enforcing discipline at the 2,400-student campus. He’s made impressive strides toward improving behavior and requiring promptness at GHS. Suspension and tardy rates are on the decline, a huge step toward improving academic performance at the school.
But academics is an area that continues to need work. This is evident in high school exit exam and STAR test scores. The school must find ways to improve the performance of students who are below grade level.
But there are issues at the other end of the academic spectrum as well. GHS administrators must review which students are taking honors and AP classes and which instructors are teaching them to make sure the classes are challenging for the advanced students for whom they are intended.
Improving academics will go a long way toward stemming the tide of Gilroy’s best and brightest students to other schools – both private and public. It’s in GHS’s best interest to stop the brain drain.
GHS must improve its relationship with the community, especially parents. Listening to parents, valuing – not avoiding – their input, is behavior that must be modeled by Bravo and emulated by his fellow administrators, faculty and staff.
Performance reviews must be consistently and accurately completed and must be made immediately available to employees and trustees. As last school year’s Kristen Porter firing debacle demonstrated – there’s no good that comes from dereliction of this basic management duty. GHS will find it difficult to recruit top-tier teachers if it earns a reputation as an unfair place to work.
Clearly, in Bob Bravo, GHS has a man who’s not afraid of a tough job, and a man who cares deeply about his students. We applaud Bravo for his commitment, and look forward to seeing improvement in the school’s academics, in its relationships with parents and in employee management.
“I think we have a lot of potential to go forward,” is how Bravo assesses GHS. He’s right on target with that declaration and it’s important to have that clear perspective.
That’s only step one. Step two is the more difficult one – taking that potential and raising the academic performance level across the board at GHS while challenging both
under-achievers and over-achievers alike.
It can be done.
