14936: Hermantin: Miami Herald- A school worth saving -- and a man who believes in it (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Sun, Feb. 23, 2003

A school worth saving -- and a man who believes in it
BY DANIEL A. GRECH
dgrech@herald.com


More photos

HELPING HANDS: Grieving at the funeral of Lucila Simon, a student he knew,
Principal Santiago Corrada, front, of Miami Edison Senior High is comforted
by school custodian Ronald Baker. 'He's like a father to me,' Baker said. 'I
wanted to be his support.' NURI VALLBONA/HERALD STAFF


The bass was turned so high the school bleachers vibrated. Cramped students
bounced and swayed as one. A disc jockey roamed the gym floor with a
microphone. ''You ready?'' he boomed.

''We're ready!'' they screamed.

Santiago Corrada burst through a door, tore through a banner and hit his
trademark split at center court. He was a step slow, the split a touch soft,
but still the crowd erupted as Miami Edison Senior High football players
strutted in.

Edison -- known for having the worst high-school test scores in the state --
also had not had a winning football team in 11 years. Last fall, the team
went 9-1 in the regular season. On this night in November, it was favored in
the first round of the state playoffs.

You could hear nine wins in the screams. You could feel redemption in the
bounce. You could see strength in the strut.

This wasn't a pep rally; it was a revival.

And the deacon was a diminutive man in a pirate's eye patch and sash.

Santiago Corrada, 38, is Edison Senior High. He hasn't missed a football
game in his five years as principal. He swings by senior picnics and
Saturday tutoring. He squeezes hands and bumps chests. He knows his kids by
name.

Last spring, when Edison became one of two high schools in Florida to
receive a second failing grade from the state, Corrada took it personally.

Corrada, the overachieving son of poor Cuban immigrants, had battled for
every perfect report card he brought home from school. He had never gotten
an F in his life.

Now he had two.

The state doesn't take into account that three out of every four Edison
students speak Creole at home, the highest concentration of Haitian students
in the nation. It doesn't handicap for each drive-by shooting on Martin
Luther King Drive or adjust for poverty so severe that students faint from
hunger or the burn of a rotten tooth.

A single standardized test has branded this school -- its teachers, its
students, its principal -- a failure.

But the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, which students take again
next month, doesn't measure pride or resolve. It doesn't measure the hope in
students' eyes as they rock the bleachers of their double-F school.

Corrada didn't know it yet, but, on that November night, he was about to
face one of the most gut-wrenching 24 hours of his career. He would lose the
big game and bury a beloved student. Heartbreak would test his endurance,
his determination, his will.

To be a principal under Gov. Jeb Bush's A+ Plan for Education, withering
pressure comes with the job. And Corrada has gotten used to days like these.

•

Shortly after he was named Edison's principal in July 1998, Corrada was
invited to meet community leaders at Grace United Methodist Church in Little
Haiti.

At the time, Edison was a mess. The lobby was lit like a closet, stairwells
smelled of urine, fleas infested the halls.

The activists had been quietly organizing a boycott for the August start of
school and had gathered the support of 500 families.

''There was huge momentum for shutting Edison down,'' said Jean-Renι
Foureau, director of the Haitian Refugee Center and a 12-year social studies
teacher at Edison. ``The district didn't realize how dangerous and volatile
the situation was.''

The meeting, held in a stifling backroom without air conditioning, began
badly. The activists threatened to leave when more district officials showed
up than were invited.

Corrada, who had distinguished himself at Campbell Drive Middle School in
Homestead by calming tensions between Mexican migrant children from two
feuding labor camps, watched in silence.

With tempers boiling, Corrada was introduced.

''Believe me, if I had my way with God,'' Corrada opened with a disarming
smile, ``I would walk in here as a Haitian speaking Creole.''

That remark drew a chuckle -- and helped buy Corrada time.

Within a year, he obtained $1.2 million in improvements from the school
district: new floors, new lights, new paint, air conditioners, landscaping,
400 computers. He installed 48 security cameras, with monitors in his
office. He mended holes cut into the back fence so students couldn't sneak
out.

''We may not be successful,'' Corrada told his teachers at their first staff
meeting, ``but if we keep doing the same old stuff, we're extinct. I'm
trying to save us.''

He revamped the curriculum and started a nursing magnet program. He picked
up soda cans and gum wrappers as he walked the halls. He cornered loitering
kids and made them go to class.

Morale soared. Students started smiling and sticking around after school.
''I feel Edison is not a jail no more,'' one student wrote for class.

By the end of the year, the percentage of students, parents and teachers who
rated Corrada effective was well above the district average for principals.

FCAT math and reading scores rose as well -- just not enough to keep the
school from receiving its first F grade from the state.

Corrada was runner-up for Miami-Dade Principal of the Year. But community
leaders gave him a title he cherished even more: ``Edison's first Haitian
principal.''

•

As students filled the bleachers for that Friday night pep rally last
November, Corrada rushed to his office to change into his pirate uniform. He
heard a commotion in the lobby.

A mentally disabled girl was pinning her special-education teacher against a
wall. Security guards pried her off and pushed her into a classroom to cool
off until her father arrived. She threw three computer monitors to the
floor.

Violence infiltrates Edison. The school, once an all-white football
powerhouse and later populated by black children from Liberty City, is now
home to poor immigrants fleeing political and economic crises in their
island homeland.

Richard Williams, head of security, calls the current crop of students the
most aggressive in his 23 years at the school. Edison stopped letting
students leave campus for lunch this school year because students were
committing crimes and ditching school when they left.

Even so, street violence has seeped onto school grounds.

The day before Halloween, a group of young toughs stopped at Edison's front
gate to chat with some students. They noticed members of a rival gang
driving by and fired four bullets at their car. Five yards away, hundreds of
students were eating lunch.

It's a principal's job to get distracted children to sit in class and learn.
As Corrada tells it, that takes being a politician, a salesman, a motivator.

In other words, a magician.

''We have 2,300 kids to 150 adults; those aren't good odds,'' Corrada says.
'If on any given day students refuse to go to class, it's over. But when I
tell them they need to go to class, they don't throw rocks or curse. They
say, `Yes, Mr. Corrada,' and they go.

``A principal chooses his role. I choose to be the person who can
communicate with these kids.''

Corrada does it by touching kids, literally and figuratively. He swims
through the corridors during class change and pokes fun and slaps shoulders
and asks about art projects. Then he tells them to hurry up to class. And
they go.

Corrada knows that not all students can be saved. Just days before
graduation last spring, star linebacker Nate Harris, who had accepted a
scholarship to the University of Miami, was the lookout in an armed robbery.
He was given a three-month sentence.

''You don't know how much I talked to Nate,'' Corrada says. ``We couldn't
take it out of him.''

Teachers are Corrada's most guarded resource. He absorbs the fistfights and
fallout from the double-F so his teachers can concentrate on class.

''Mr. Corrada is our shield,'' says Mary Beth Thompson, a 16-year chemistry
teacher.

After the mentally disabled student pinned special-education department head
Jennifer Zirke to the wall, Corrada promised that the girl wouldn't return
to school.

''I need you more than I need her,'' he told Zirke.

Corrada later learned that the girl was misdiagnosed. She was psychotic.

•

Corrada's stomach first started hurting at an educators conference in
Orlando last year. He was diagnosed with a hiatal hernia and diverticulosis.

Corrada lost 60 pounds. The wincing pain sapped his appetite and strength. A
once stocky man who always took for granted an overflow of energy admits
that it's harder to climb Edison's three flights of stairs these days.

His mother, Scarlet, looked at her son with sadness during a recent visit to
the Kendall Publix where she works as a cashier.

''Drink some,'' Scarlet told him, offering a cafecito. ``You look tired.''

''I am tired,'' Corrada said, pushing the coffee away.

Corrada's health problems stem from stress. ''I know part of my illness
comes from all the pressure I've had to internalize,'' he says. ``I swallow
the stress. I don't take it out on anyone or anything. I respond by working
harder. I find comfort in doing my very best.''

The stress of being Edison's principal -- a daunting job under normal
circumstances -- soared last June when the state gave the school its second
F.

Corrada flew to Tallahassee during the summer break to explain to Gov. Jeb
Bush and the Cabinet why Edison was failing and how it would improve. The
state checks up on Edison twice a month through conference calls and
requires Corrada to file monthly progress reports.

Earlier this school year, double-F schools had to distribute a state survey
similar to the district's annual survey on school effectiveness. The state
results matched previous surveys: Parents, teachers and students love
Edison, and they especially love what's left of its principal.

Each year, Miami-Dade high schools nominate their top students for the
Silver Knights achievement awards. Most Edison nominees have no way to get
to the ceremony, so Corrada has made it a ritual to take them to dinner and
then to the presentation.

In 2000, the Silver Knights ceremony fell on May 2, his daughter Tiffany's
seventh birthday. His wife, Arlene, had prepared a celebration.

Alvin Smith, Edison's alumni association president since 1986, asked Corrada
why he went to the Silver Knights instead. ''He told me he celebrates his
daughter's birth every day,'' Smith marveled.

During a rare quiet moment after last fall's pep rally, Corrada explained
his dedication to his Edison family:

``Can I keep doing this at this level, with this commitment, with this
stamina? Will my body make it? Will my personal relationships make it?

``It's a sad thing to say, but I am so dedicated to this school I'd come in
here on my deathbed and do this job with my last breath. Because I don't
like getting licked.''

•

It was the final play of the playoff game. Edison was up 10-8. With no
timeouts left, visiting William T. Dwyer High of Palm Beach Gardens lined up
on Edison's two-yard line.

The Dwyer quarterback ran for the goal line. He got stuffed for a loss.

The home-field crowd bounced and swayed. ''Five, four,'' they joyfully
counted down the final seconds. ``Three, two.''

Stop.

The Dwyer quarterback took off his helmet, and the head referee signaled an
equipment timeout. Dwyer's field goal unit raced onto the field, even though
a substitution during an equipment timeout is against the rules.

The referee restarted the clock. Dwyer kicked the field goal. The Edison
home crowd was stunned. The scoreboard clicked three times: 11-10.

Edison players staggered off the field, throwing their helmets and pulling
off their jerseys and shoulder pads in disgust. The pads looked like
decapitated bodies. Players openly wept.

Players started toward the cheering Dwyer sideline, but Corrada held them
back. Edison fans began throwing souvenir plastic footballs onto the field.
Menace was in the air.

The timekeeper in the press box got on the public address system and begged
for a police escort.

The bass beat rattled the night air as Edison fans got into their cars.
Headlights blinked on like demon's eyes. Someone in the shadows threw a rock
through the windshield of the Dwyer team bus.

Edison's players stood cross-armed in the parking lot, waiting for their
bus. They watched in silence as Dwyer drove past with what felt like a
stolen victory.

•

Corrada returned to his office at Edison after the game. He held his
forehead, just as he had the day he got news of the second F, and read the
rule book of the Florida High School Activities Association.

He read that schools aren't allowed to protest the results of a game or
complain publicly about a call.

Corrada drafted a letter to the association anyway. He faxed it after
midnight.

''It's a little bit like the FCAT,'' Corrada said. ``You play by our rules
and at the last minute we change them. And if you protest, we fine you. Or
give you an F.''

Corrada sighed deeply. ``I get so tired of being beaten up and stomped.''

•

Every principal has bad days.

Days like the one when Nate Harris was arrested. Days when someone fired a
gun outside school. Days when the F grade was announced.

''But the darkest day in the life of a principal is to see one of his
students pass,'' Corrada said.

The Saturday morning after the football game, Corrada spoke ''as a friend''
at Poofy's funeral.

Poofy was Lucila Simon, class of 2001 and a member of Edison's state
champion girls basketball team. She was the only student Corrada knew when
he arrived at Edison from Campbell Drive, because that summer she had moved
from Homestead to Little Haiti.

Eight days earlier, Poofy had visited Corrada at Edison. That night, she
died in her sleep of a heart attack and a brain aneurysm. She was 20.

Inner-city high schools are at the heart of their communities. They are
sanctuaries, symbols, shrines. Above all, they are family.

Next to Poofy's casket flew a Red Raiders flag.

''It is the job of a principal to love every student,'' Corrada told 300
people at Mount Calvary Missionary Baptist Church, six blocks from Edison.
``But I especially loved Poofy, a friendly face in a strange school.''

Corrada was handed tissues as he walked back to his seat. He sat down alone,
one of the few white faces in the room. He began to cry.

A black man in a mustard-colored pinstripe suit, school custodian Ronald
Baker, slid into the pew next to Corrada. He gripped his shoulder and took
his hand. For the next hour, Baker didn't let go.

•

On dark days, Corrada feels like a failure. He sees no light, no hope.

''The principal of a school like this is destined to be squeezed,'' said
English department head Shawn DeNight, the Florida Teacher of the Year in
1995. ``Corrada is forced to spend his precious time doing things that don't
matter but are required, and not things that matter but aren't measured.
He'd rather walk the hallways and solve problems.

``Corrada's a platoon leader trying to hold down the fort, and he's being
attacked on all sides.''

•

Corrada fights battles he knows he will lose. He knows the value of small
victories in the face of large defeats.

And just when his energy is waning, a moment of redemption revives him.

The Florida High School Activities Association refused to consider Corrada's
protest over the outcome of the playoff game.

The Edison alumni association took the challenge to circuit court. A week
after the game, a judge denied relief. Corrada returned to Edison from the
courthouse to announce that the miracle season was officially over. Then he
went to the lobby to monitor class change.

Wide receiver Jackie Chambers, who also plays guard on the basketball team,
walked up to his principal.

''Don't worry, Mr. C,'' he said. ``We'll take it out on them in
basketball.''

Corrada's face, a mask of exhaustion and defeat since the game, broke into a
wide smile. ``Thank God for you, Jackie!''



Herald writers Erynn Carr and Monika Leal contributed to this report.


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