GILROY
– Bob Bravo doesn’t compare himself to comic book super heroes.
The first-year Gilroy High School principal doesn’t even call
himself a major comic book collector.
But Bravo, 34, does own hundreds of comics and reads many of
them for the pure enjoyment of the story line, he says. Listening
to district officials describe the enormity of his job, the
mild-mannered Bravo may find the heroic tales professionally
useful.
GILROY – Bob Bravo doesn’t compare himself to comic book super heroes. The first-year Gilroy High School principal doesn’t even call himself a major comic book collector.
But Bravo, 34, does own hundreds of comics and reads many of them for the pure enjoyment of the story line, he says. Listening to district officials describe the enormity of his job, the mild-mannered Bravo may find the heroic tales professionally useful.
“There’s no question about it, being a high school principal is one of the toughest jobs in education,” Gilroy Unified School District Superintendent Edwin Diaz said. “It’s one of the toughest jobs even when things are normal.”
Things aren’t entirely normal at GHS, which last year experienced a controversy over its lack of an honors program that was aired on national public radio. This school year three of the four assistant principals serving under Bravo are new. And next year, if his graduating students don’t pass a state high school exit exam, they won’t receive a high school diploma.
“It is still early in the year, but one thing is apparent,” Diaz said. “People feel like they’re being listened to.”
The feeling extends from teachers to students.
“The biggest change has been more collaboration. I’ve already had a couple of conferences where he invited me to his office and asked my opinions on different issues,” said teacher Ron Kinoshita, a 25-year GHS veteran. “He wants input from administrators, parents and students before he makes any major decisions. That’s his style. He’s definitely team-oriented.”
Students also have positive things to say.
“One of the first things I noticed was that he’s more involved with the student body. When he observes classes, you can tell he really makes it a point to see how things are being taught,” GHS senior Megan Stevens said.
Stevens remembers a time when a class she was in was watching a film when Bravo walked in to observe.
“He stayed for a few minutes and left,” Stevens recalled. “Toward the end of class he came back. You could tell he wanted to see how the teacher was using the material. That told me a lot about his style.”
Bravo, a Gilroy resident, was given the principal’s position last summer after an initial search for Gilroy High’s top post yielded no viable candidates, school district trustee Bob Kraemer explained.
Kraemer believes the district has found in Bravo, a former assistant principal at GHS and last year the principal of Mt. Madonna High School, the correct person to right the GHS ship.
“I couldn’t be more proud and impressed with the job he’s doing. I’m impressed with the way he handles groups and I like his honesty,” Kraemer said. “He’s got a long way to go (to improve student performance at the high school), and people expect results yesterday.”
It’s quite a predicament Bravo has inherited, especially considering he didn’t think he’d be a high school principal when he studied history at the University of California at Los Angeles in the late ’80s and early ’90s.
“I always knew I’d do something in public service after watching my dad have a career with the Sheriff’s Department and the Department of Corrections,” Bravo observed. “I never imagined then I’d be a high school principal.”
But it was “a sale” that got Bravo into education. Bravo explained that UCLA advertised in the Daily Bruin newspaper an affordable program in which graduates could earn a master’s degree in education in just one school year.
“I figured I’d try it and see if I liked it,” Bravo said. “The worst thing that could happen is I would have spent a year doing something I didn’t like, but I’d end up with a master’s degree that I could use some other way.”
Bravo tried it, and not only did he like it, he was pretty good at it, too. A female classmate recommended him to her father, then GHS principal Ernie Zermeno, who hired Bravo as a social science teacher. Gilroy was a perfect fit for Bravo, a San Jose native.
“Gilroy was always a Sunday drive location for me. I knew my family would be happy if I came back.”
It didn’t take long for Zermeno to convince Bravo to be a part of several restructuring committees at GHS. His out-of-class involvement with the high school gave Bravo an opportunity to practice and think about whole-school issues. That experience ultimately is what landed him an assistant principal’s position at Gilroy High.
“Things have a way of working out for me,” Bravo says. “When it comes to my career, I don’t have any long-term goal even though people are always asking me ‘What’s next?’ I play things by ear and take one step at a time.”
Bravo plays it much differently when goals for his students and his institution are involved.
“That’s where I’m game-plan oriented. That’s when I ask ‘What’s the plan? Let’s see the plan,’ ” Bravo says.
Two weeks ago, Bravo unveiled a multi-phased plan for improving student achievement that had district administrators, trustees and parents gushing with praise. And last month, Bravo announced plans to expand the honors program to freshman and sophomores next year. He will come back in January and February with recommendations for honors classes in math and science subjects as well.
Currently, a pilot honors program is being offered to freshmen in English and social studies.
Bravo calls himself a supporter of honors programs, but stops short of the “all or nothing” thinking that caused parent groups and administrators to clash last year.
“I think we need to look at heterogeneous classes (a mix of high achievers and under-performers) and see to what extent do they work. How large should the gap in student ability be? That discussion didn’t happen last year,” Bravo said.
“We need to give different kids different experiences, but we don’t need 700 versions of one class. I don’t think it’s a good thing if we’re splitting hairs,” Bravo said. “It’s fair to think we need an honors program, now we have to decide how big. The challenge is getting all voices involved and still making timely decisions.”
The state high school exit exam is another high-profile and potentially contentious issue for Bravo and Gilroy High. Only half of Gilroy’s Class of 2004 – the first class the new law affects – has passed the exam.
Even though Bravo will be their principal for only two of their four years in high school, it will be him who must handle any aftermath when a percentage of these students don’t pass the exam by June 2004.
“When you look at other states with exit exams, there were big gaps two or three years before the final exam and then in the last year the gap closed and more than 90 percent passed,” Bravo said. “I think we’ll be able to get a passing percentage in the high 90s, but we can’t just sit back and say ‘Other states did it.’ ”
Bravo is increasing the amount of remedial instruction for under-performing students. He also has implemented a curriculum-wide program for regularly assessing students’ writing skills, an area GHS has identified as lacking.
Bravo is not a critic of the exit exam, but he does see its flaws. He evaluates the test content as “not representative of what we aspire to” but rather a bare minimum of what students should know.
Bravo also said the test won’t show much insight into what Spanish-speaking students know about science because the exam is only given in English.
“We need to keep that in mind and not equate results on that test with overall intelligence,” Bravo said.
Bravo said he doesn’t rule out lobbying at the state level some day to administer the test in English and Spanish, but now is not the time.
“In a democracy everyone must play a part,” Bravo says. “I see individual kids who need our help to get a diploma. My job is to ensure that the help takes place.”
