Gap in wealth grows in schools

Poor schools in Hillsborough County have increased nearly sevenfold in 15 years. Some say an end to busing could add to the problem.

By SARAH SCHWEITZER

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 11, 2000

TAMPA -- In the midst of an economy running on rocket fuel, poor students in Hillsborough County are increasingly concentrated in overwhelmingly poor schools, separated from wealthy and middle-class students in the booming suburbs.

While growing racial segregation in schools has captured public attention in recent years, economic segregation has crept along with little notice.

Just 15 years ago, Hillsborough had eight schools with more than 75 percent of the student body on free or reduced lunches, the traditional barometer of school poverty. Today there are 54 such high-poverty schools, a number that some say could grow under the School Board's plan to end busing for desegregation.

"It's a scary trend," said School Board member Candy Olson, who has watched the growing chasm with quiet dismay in recent years.

Olson and others worry about research showing that schools with large numbers of poor students struggle mightily and often fail by conventional yardsticks such as test scores. While poor students can succeed, the studies show, their odds diminish greatly when they attend impoverished schools.

The correlation between concentrated poverty and low grades is found in Gov. Jeb Bush's A+

plan. Of the 39 Hillsborough schools that received D's, 34 were schools where 75 percent or more of the students are poor. Of the 35 schools that received A's and B's, none had high concentrations of poverty.

In Hillsborough County, the growing rich-poor divide is stark.

About half of all poor students in Hillsborough today attend schools with high concentrations of poverty. Fifteen years ago, less than 10 percent of poor students attended impoverished schools.

Meanwhile, new schools in suburbs miles from poor areas continue to be built, drawing well-to-do students and only a smattering of poor students.

"We just don't have as many schools in the middle anymore," said Walt Bartlett, the district's director of Title I, which funnels federal money to poor schools.

District officials offer no definitive explanation for the trend but point to population growth in both the suburbs and Tampa's core. There have also been changes in school boundaries that have pushed poor students into the same schools.

The trend, some fear, could accelerate with the district's desegregation proposal. Under the so-called school-choice plan, busing for desegregation would end. Thousands of students now bused to suburban schools could opt for neighborhood schools.

If that happens, city schools would become even poorer.

District officials say a better balance will be reached because middle-class students will be drawn to inner-city schools through incentives such as magnet programs. If anything, they say, the desegregation plan will reduce the number of high poverty schools.

Among the 54 high poverty schools are places such as east Tampa's Edison/Lomax Elementary School, where classes spill into two graceful, historic buildings, one called Edison and one called Lomax, several blocks apart. Kindergarten through third-grade students attend school at the overcrowded Edison building; fourth- and fifth-graders are housed at the Lomax building.

More than 90 percent of the students are on free or reduced lunch. The challenges of the concentrated poverty are evident.

Student transiency is high, grandmothers have parenting responsibilities for roughly 25 percent of the kids, angry outbursts are common, teaching jobs are tough to fill and head lice remain a persistent cause for some student absences.

Lack of parental involvement is a particular sore spot, with PTA officers often struggling to draw 10 people to meetings.

Natasha Hodge, 24, is among those rarely seen at the school. A single mother, she lives in a four-bedroom house with her four children, mother, sister and her sister's two children. Hodge cleans planes for Continental Airlines from 4 a.m. to 2 p.m. four days a week.

With the six children dangling in various poses on the black railing of her home's porch, Hodge explained on a recent afternoon that she likes Edison/Lomax but has no time to spend at the school.

"I work too much for the meetings," said the Virgin Islands native.

Experts say Edison/Lomax cuts a classic profile of a high poverty school. And they say it's not surprising that it earned a D under the A+

plan. The grade makes principal Larry Sykes wince. The deck is stacked against schools such as Edison/Lomax, he says.

But the system isn't changing, he adds quietly, and schools such as Edison/Lomax must simply do better.

Poor schools, studies show, are capable of boosting low test scores. The right mix of principals and teachers, along with a precisely focused mission, can make some of the poorest schools well-oiled machines where learning flows and students outperform expections.

Experts point out, however, that successful poor schools are the exception.

"We know that schools with a majority middle class population work well," said Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a New York think tank. "So rather than hope for the exceptional principal, I think we should be trying to give poor students more chances to go to middle class schools."

Some school districts in the country are so concerned about clumping high-poverty students together that they sprinkle low-income students into high-income schools.

The Wake County, N.C., school district, which includes Raleigh, recently adopted a plan to limit the percentage of needy and low-performing students per school.

Hillsborough has no such plans. It is under somewhat less pressure than some districts to address its rich-poor divide. Unlike urban districts smack up against suburban districts and under threat of flight to these more affluent areas, Hillsborough's suburbs are within the district.

But Superintendent Earl Lennard says the district is attempting to fix the problem. "One major way we have been addressing this is to put our resources in these schools," he said.

Indeed, poor schools on average today have more computers than wealthier ones.

At schools such as Edison/Lomax, supplies are plentiful. A new library dots the Lomax campus, and Edison is undergoing major renovations.

Still, the school labors long and hard to succeed.

Sykes and his assistant principals, Dale Nelson and Nancy Sutton, put in 12-hour days so they can visit parents or grandparents, who often are the designated guardians. Saturdays are work days for the principals. They spend hours scouting businesses for donations to supplement meager PTA donations.

Teachers pitch in their own money for treats, the only way to engage children more accustomed to the glare of a television than words on a page. "That's my treasure chest," said Mattie Johnson, a fourth-grade teacher, pointing to a plastic box of candy and trinkets. "We have to always give them something to motivate them."

Lunch hours often are used to soothe feelings bruised during scuffles sparked by insults.

"These children react before they think," said Lynn Roberts, the school's lead teacher. "They don't care about consequences because they've learned at home that there are no consequences."

The school nurse and her aide battle some of the most intractable problems. Of nearly 300 children they see each month, many come to school sick or hurt and in need of treatment their parents can't afford.

"When they come with stomachaches, I don't send them home," said Mildred Wingate, the nurse's aide at Edison/Lomax. "First I ask if they have eaten."

In the pocket of east Tampa that sends students to Edison/Lomax, the divide between rich and poor in the school system is obvious to parents. But the divide is hardly viewed uniformly.

Beverly Shular-Cooper, a homemaker married to a car-repair shop owner, put 11 children through Lomax/Edison and sent nine of them to college. Two are still in high school. A former PTA president, Shular-Cooper visited the school often when her children were there, sometimes two or three times a day.

She is full of praise for Edison/Lomax.

"If I had to do it all over again," she said. "I'd still send them there."

A couple blocks away Tyisha McCoy, a shy 8-year-old with an effervescent smile, sees Edison/Lomax differently. Tyisha likes school a great deal, so much so that she wants to be a teacher. But she is aware of Edison's shortages, some of which are intangible.

"I want to be a teacher, and I want to be learning more," she said as she stood dressed in a Winnie the Pooh dress on her way to church with her grandmother. "But our teacher only makes us do a little reading, a little math. I want to be learning more."

Her grandmother, Linda Burke, wonders if her granddaughter would be better off somewhere else. Asked if she'd prefer a wealthier school, Burke looks away.

"Edison is good," she said quietly. "But I would prefer that."

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