Other schools make use of new methods

By SHELBY OPPEL

© St. Petersburg Times, published March 5, 2000

Brenda Clark, principal at Azalea Elementary School, may attract the most attention for using "quality," but she is by no means alone in Pinellas classrooms.

At 74 of 164 schools, teams of principals and teachers have been trained in the techniques. Candidates for school principalships must complete two years of "quality" training in order to apply.

The methods have been endorsed and adopted by the School Board, Superintendent Howard Hinesley and the Pinellas Classroom Teachers Association, the local teachers union.

And since 1994, the district has funded the "Quality Academy," a department of 11 employees at the district's Largo headquarters whose purpose is to ensure all 7,700 Pinellas teachers know how to use "quality" in their classrooms.

About $200,000 of the academy's $860,470 annual budget comes from the work it does for other school districts, from Citrus County schools to far-flung districts in Connecticut, Colorado and Brazil.

"We are the district that formulated what this stuff looks like in schools and people know that," said Kenneth Rigsby, former principal at Blanton Elementary, now executive director of the Quality Academy.

In Pinellas, Rawlings Elementary is the only Florida school to have won the Governor's Sterling Award for Quality, a prize for organizational excellence in the public and private sectors. Azalea will make its second run at the award this spring.

At Osceola High School, principal Doug Smith began last fall to introduce "quality" methods to the class of 2003. After one grading period, the percentage of ninth-graders with a C average or higher was up 12 percent over last year.

"I see it as a beginning," Smith said. "I think "quality' provides a structure for us to change, for us to be more responsive."

In 1993, three years after Hinesley, other top administrators and teachers union leaders were introduced to the new methods by local business people, the district received the Governor's Sterling Award.

Yet, despite the number of employees districtwide who have been trained in the new methods, principals like Clark who require their use still are rare.

Instead of forcing the new methods on teachers, the district is encouraging their use slowly, Hinesley said. But he acknowledges demoting some administrators who would not be budged.

"I would think, within the next three or four years, we will be solid in every school, and doing everything we can to be in 100 percent of the classrooms," Hinesley said.

"That's our goal."

Azalea Elementary School

1680 74th St. N, St. Petersburg, 33710

Enrollment: 770 students (approximately 70 percent white, 30 percent black. Hispanic and Asian students account for two-tenths of one percent of the school population.)

Attendance zone: 66th Street west to Boca Ciega Bay, between Tyrone Boulevard and Ninth Avenue N. To comply with a federal desegregation order, African-American students are bused in from Bartlett Park and the northern tip of Coquina Key.

Students who receive free or reduced-price lunch: 56 percent.

Mobility rate: 40 percent.

Students with learning disabilities or other handicaps: 25 percent.

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