Seattle Press on Line - A City High School is Stripped of Vital Facilities

A City High School is Stripped of Vital Facilities

By Tom Herriman

New teacher Ron Carr is determined to bring pride back to Marshall Alternative High School.

Jan 11, 2001 -- Ron Carr couldn't understand why the shower and locker rooms at Marshall High School were filled with junk and the tools had been removed from the woodshop. He couldn't understand why the auditorium had been taken over by the school board, and Marshall students weren't allowed in.

Carr is a new teacher at Marshall, an alternative school in the Green Lake neighborhood. Marshall has 260 students, including some tough kids who have been kicked out of other schools in the city. If they get their act together at Marshall they can finish school there, or go back to their original school. For some, Marshall is the end of the line; for others, it's a new beginning.

"Many of our students don't understand civic virtue, politeness, rules, language, courtesy," Carr explained. "Their personal lives overspill in school all the time. They get fighting and anger confused. Much of the day, we just try to keep them from hurting each other."

Carr is used to working with problem kids. For several years he was a teacher at Greenhill, a maximum-security juvenile prison in Arlington.

"In some ways, it was much easier there," Carr says. "The kids were prisoners. They couldn't get away from you. Arlington was a state-of-the-art facility. We had everything. Computers, new furniture, all the facilities you could ask for. You had to commit a crime to go there. Here at Marshall, you just get the bare bones. Here, we have to persuade kids to stay in class, pay attention and act civilized."

Marshall High Principal Dr. Joe Drake.

Bureaucratic Neglect

Carr shows me the locker rooms next to the gym. Scrap lumber and broken furniture is piled helter-skelter throughout the room. Locker doors hang from one hinge. The shower room is littered with broken plumbing fixtures.

"Vandalism?" I ask. "No," Carr sighed. "It's just bureaucratic neglect. They don't think these kids need a shower room."

We walk around the school and Carr shows me the tennis courts. "They're beautiful," he says, "but there's no tennis program here, and nobody to teach it. We have an Olympic runner on the faculty, but we don't have a track program."

In fact there's no athletic program at all at Marshall, except for a few teachers who bring in their own basketballs and play pick-up games with the kids.

Marshall's principal, Dr. Joe Drake, says, "We're a low priority for the school district. They really don't like alternative programs."

The basic problem is in the budget. Every school in the city gets $3,600 per student. Marshall gets the same, even though the kids require a lot more supervision and support. As a result there's no money left for art, for sports, for crafts.

"We don't turn kids away from here," says Dr. Drake.

Marshall's neglected shower room.

The auditorium is beautiful, with a big proscenium stage, a projection booth and professional lighting and stage equipment. But the room is used by the school district as a teacher resource facility. It's never used as an auditorium.

"We could be putting on plays here, teaching kids lighting and stagecraft. It could be a tremendous creative outlet," Drake says. "We've been asking for the last four years to get it back. Finally they said we'll get it back this spring."

"When kids see the closed-down facilities," Carr says, "it reinforces their negative self-image. 'You are bad, you don't deserve phys. ed., you don't deserve a wood shop,' that's the message they get."

Carr thinks his students need the same outlets and activities as a regular school. "I'd rather take a kid down to the weight room and talk to him while we lift weights. I want to be able to tell them, 'If you want to be a fighter, let's go over to the gym, I'll teach you how to box.'"

Students & Staff Get Creative

The school is not lacking for ideas. Dr. Drake recalled how a group of students and teachers started a food store last year.

"The kids hate the school lunches," Drake said. "The food is cooked over at Roosevelt, then brought over here and re-heated, even though we have a fully equipped kitchen. The kids won't eat it. They'd rather go down to Albertson's and get fried chicken.

"So we started a little store at lunchtime--sold baked potatoes, hot links and nachos. Some of the staff started it. The kids ran it. It caught on like wildfire. But the school board made us shut it down ... they said it competed with the lunch program.

"We could have a program training culinary workers--we've got the facility. They could be making decent food, that the kids would eat, and at the same time getting real job training that would help them after they graduate." Instead, the kitchen is empty and unused most of the time, and the kids eat at the supermarket.

Improving Community Relations

There's occasional friction between the school and the surrounding community. The students move around the neighborhood in noisy, jostling groups. Some area residents feel intimidated. They sense the violence lying just below the surface, and have seen it erupt in arguments and street fights.

Carr is looking for ways to tap the community for help in making the school better, and finding ways the school can serve the community.

He wants to start a weightlifting program at Marshall, to siphon off some of the excess energy and aggression the kids bring to school, and teach them the discipline of physical exercise. He hopes to raise $10,000 to set up the weight room and refurbish the showers.

The Ballard High School athletic department has agreed to donate some unused weights, benches and other equipment, and Carr has gotten a promise of help from the Pacific Northwest Ironworkers Union Apprenticeship Program.

The union is sending 8 apprentices with tools and equipment to start renovating the locker room as a class project early this year. Marshall students will have the opportunity to work alongside the apprentices and apply for the program themselves.

"You basically need a high school diploma and a driver's license to start, and you're making $16 an hour--more than a beginning school teacher," Carr said. Two Marshall students have already applied for the apprenticeships.

Lee Nugent of the Ironworkers says he hopes to recruit even more Marshall students to the apprenticeship program through the locker room project.

With work on the weight room underway, Carr and Dr. Drake are looking ahead to other projects that will make Marshall more relevant for its students. They're currently recruiting local business owners and community leaders to volunteer as tutors and mentors, to show that some people in the adult world surrounding the school care about the kids within.

Dr. Drake says, "Someday I hope we'll be putting on plays for neighbors to come in and enjoy, and offering services like computer classes for senior citizens. We want the school to be used by the community. We want a partnership."

Reader Comments

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Dan	Jan 18, 2001	Wallingford in Seattle	Retired Kitchen worker
If you started a cooking school that would lead to employment, would the district allow this type of program. There is an excellent cooking/employment program for homeless downttown. It is in the Josepheum @ 2nd and stewart. Maybe the people there would expand their program to Marshal??


Dan Wiggen	Jan 18, 2001	Wallingford in Seattle	Retired Kitchen worker
My clumsy fingers sent most of my comments, but before I could edit, and offer my help. I am a former VISTA and AmeriCorps Volunteer, I would volunteer my time to help expedite a new program. Bill Gates donates a lot of money to education. A copy of this article should be brought to his attention.