Samohi to be redesigned into six small schools
While it may seem like business as usual this school year, Santa Monica High School has been turned on its head.
It is upside down by design. Ilene Straus, the school’s new principal and chief educational officer, was brought in this summer to transform the city’s main high school from a loosely operated organization to a well-oiled machine.
In recent years, some at Samohi have said its leadership had fallen off, leaving many teachers, parents and students questioning the effectiveness of the school in preparing teen-agers for the world ahead of them.
“The greatest impediment was that the support from the administration wasn’t there,” said Samohi history teacher Don Hedrick. He added that new leadership at Samohi was not only a welcome sight, but necessary.
“People are really encouraged that there were some clear expectations and that someone is in charge,” he said. “People want a leader.”
When Straus took over the controls at Samohi in July, the first order of business was to find a team that could set the ship on a new course. Now, one month into the school year, there are more than 40 new staff members at Samohi. Six of the eight administrators are new and nine of 12 advisors are fresh faces. And there are 27 new teachers.
“I had to look at the goals of the school and look at the team,” Straus said. “When I got here I listened to what was wrong and what is right. In this case, what was wrong was the organization and the operations of the school.”
Some teachers opted for early retirement through an incentive plan, while others were simply let go. Several new positions also were added to the administration, including four new advisors. Once called “counselors,” they provide one-on-one guidance to students.
Because there are 3,400 students at Samohi, counselors were handling more than 350 students each during the school year. Now the team of 12 advisors handle about 100 fewer students apiece, allowing a more personalized approach.
Jami Orlowski, who followed Straus from Lincoln Middle School, is one of those new advisors. She took the job at Samohi because she believes it will give her greater opportunity to shape students’ careers.
“I came here to get in on the ground floor of a restructure and redesign of a huge high school,” she said.
While the traditional role of a counselor is to whip kids into shape when they are falling behind in class work or exhibiting problematic behaviors, Samohi’s new advisors work with students more as if they were partners.
“Anything that has to do with the child’s life at school, we are the center point,” Orlowski said. “Most of our role is positive. We focus on changing behavior instead of punishment.”
Jason Harley, Samohi’s dean of students for ninth and 10th grades, came from the Los Angeles Unifed School District because he also saw an unique opportunity to work with students on a more personal level.
“I could see immediately when I got here that the focus was to have connection with the students,” Harley said. “Where I came from, it was about keeping people in their seats.”
“I could see immediately when I got here that the focus was to have connection with the students. Where I came from, it was about keeping people in their seats.” — – JASON HARLEY Samohi dean of students
Straus overhauled the entire structure of the school’s administration to give more guidance to students — and also teachers and staff.
Last year, there were two co-principals with four assistant principals, a dean of students and eight counselors. This year, it’s Straus at the top with an associate principal, four assistant principals, two deans of students and 12 advisors.
“We needed to look at the organization and say ‘how do you guide a school?’” Straus said. “Part of it is who is in charge and what are the procedures. Some of it is having the system work effectively and we have to redesign the school and make it effective.”
Kathleen Martin, Samohi’s 12th grade assistant principal who is responsible for curriculum and instruction, said the changes at Samohi were noticeable almost overnight.
“Student contact was at a real minimum and it was negative,” she said. “There is much more contact on a positive level now.”
In an effort to have even more student-teacher contact in a time when more and more students are enrolling at Samohi, the school is about to be radically redesigned.
Ruth Esseln, Samohi’s new 10th grade assistant principal, is helping to spearhead a project that will transform the high school into six, smaller schools — each one with its own academic curriculum, principal and students. Esseln came from Seattle where high school redesigns are becoming more common.
“The school is ready,” she said. “Santa Monica is in a different place now... they’ve talked about it for years.”
A redesign committee, comprised of 19 teachers and 12 members of the community, will work on a plan that will be presented to the school board early next year. The goal is to have Samohi split into six different schools by next school year.
Administrators say no more than 600 students will enroll in each of what are called the “six houses,” which will be on Samohi’s campus. However, Straus envisions possibly another, smaller high school somewhere off of Samohi’s campus.
The concept is not new, but has rarely been put into practice at schools around the country. A few schools have done it on the East Coast. Samohi may be one of the first high schools in the state to complete a redesign.
“There has been a small schools movement for a long time but it hasn’t been done yet,” Esseln said.
The challenge will be how to deal with allocating the school’s resources outside of the basic academic courses like English, math and science.
“How do you handle electives and sports programs?” Esseln said. “You can’t hire a music teacher for each house so we are looking at that.
“We want to make sure each house is heterogeneous, open to all and have everything available to all students,” she added.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 8, 2002. Read the original PDF.