Austin Chronicle: Looking back at the 2010 school year, you’d come out of some success at the International High School and then you deliberately pulled what some people saw as a low-scoring card out of the pack by choosing to head up Reagan. A lot of people would blanch about inviting a reporter on campus in those circumstances. So why did you open the doors to Michael Brick?
Anabel Garza: I’ve always been one to be very open to what we’re doing, because I don’t believe Reagan belongs to me. I think it’s a public school, and I believe that the public should know what’s going on. I had always had somebody, interns coming in from UT coming in and writing about what we were doing, because I’d always thought we’d been doing something unique at the International High School, and the struggles that we faced, and really how hard kids have it when they come to situations
like that.
This year the campus was full of people: We had feds and state and 600 volunteers at any moment in the building. So Allan Weeks, who was our community advocate, he was coming into the school and Michael came with Allan, and he asked if he could write a story about the school, and I said, “OK, sure, go ahead.” I thought it would be a good record of what we were doing, and at the end of the story, who knew? I had been in places where I had been able to look over the fence and see what had been happening. I had been at International High School, and we lived on the same campus as Eastside [Memorial], and so I knew what I wanted to avoid. But I wasn’t going to have time to write about it. Because if we lost the battle, well … but if we won the battle, did we keep track of how we went about it so we could help other people do the same?
AC: For you on the ground, what was the point when you said, “OK, we have a grip on this,” and then when did you really start to feel that you could see the finish line, that it was reachable?
AG: I always feel like, when you have kids, there’s always a chance, and there’s always the possibility of a wonderful ending. Although some people don’t believe that’s possible, I believe it’s possible with any – any – kids. Can they all achieve the same way? No. We’re not all at the Olympics today. But can I go out and do things to the best of my ability, the best of my potential? Yes, because that’s my job, to get you there. I’m not the smartest person or the most talented person, but you are, in some shape or form, and I can find it and I can push it and I can help you do that.
I think you can encourage and change kids and teachers, but you have to believe. There can’t be an ounce of doubt that this is possible. Those are the people that I had to counsel, “Go to another place where your belief doesn’t have to be as strong, because here we have to believe and have no – absolutely no – doubt we can take these kids there. They had to learn how to believe in themselves, and the adults had to learn to believe in themselves. We had very inexperienced teachers, and that was by choice. Because I didn’t get the experience necessary to do the job, but I got the heart. When you have the heart, you have everything, and the rest will come in time. That was all I was asking for. Just give me time.
AC: Talking to Michael, he said that getting out from the “academically unacceptable” stamp didn’t just mean no more externally inflicted changes. It meant no longer having that letter going out heavily hinting to parents that they should leave. So what changed for you in that first year being classified as academically acceptable?
AG: If you look closely, it’s always by a percentage, or by a kid, or by a percentage of a kid. So why should that change everything you believe in and everything you do for all kids? Again, it’s all about time, and the time necessary to fix problems that have come as a consequence of poverty and lack of exposure. Every morning, when I take my own child to school, there are lessons, just in the chatting that we do. Some of those kids don’t have those opportunities, so how do we fix that?
I was very proud of the effort of the kids, because they were on board. I said, “This is our school, so if you don’t do something, we drown.” So they were in. You can come to our campus, and we have knuckleheads just like anywhere, but that year, these kids decided that they wanted to stay there and they wanted to put forth the effort that it would take to do that. We took that to heart – go hard or go home. That’s so hard to teach kids, that if we just believe, then we can pull this off. That was our mission that first year, and nothing changes with me. We’re still on a mission, but now we’re pushing higher and harder.
Can our status change? It can change by a percentage of one kid that wasn’t on a mission, or came from somewhere else, or didn’t feel like it on one day. That’s the corner I don’t like to be in, because no matter what those numbers look like, I’m going to work really hard for those kids, for the district, for this city, for everybody. Yet one percentage can change so much and can be so damaging for a school, a district, a reputation. We’re trying to get past the reputation that the school went bad, and one minute, one second can change that. So I try to maintain, so we don’t pull hard left or hard right. I try to hold steady with what’s valuable for teaching kids.
Experience? You can’t substitute for that. I had a lot of newer teachers who had heart, but now they’re a little older. Two years later, I would put them up against anybody. I have some strong academic teams, but we never get credit for what we receive and what we do with them in one year. Their magnificent efforts, their tireless efforts on both halves. I have kids coming in who couldn’t speak English who, this year, they’re graduating early. They’re kids who came from Burma, from Mexico, from Nepal, who didn’t even speak the language, but are we celebrating those miracles?
AC: Those kids so rarely show up in the thinking, especially in the accountability ratings, which break kids into very simplistic blocks that don’t represent the reality of the school. When it comes to the end of the year, and you look at your ratings and you look at your campus, how do you make those two things work together? Because that seems like the big task for any principal.
AG: It’s huge, for everybody in Texas. We want to be accountable, but when people are making the rules for education, it’s almost like zooming in on a puzzle piece. You only see this much of it. But when you’re a principal, you zoom out a little more to be able to say: “OK, here are the parameters that we have to meet. What do I have in my cupboard? How many of these kind of kids, and how many of these kind of kids, and what do I have to do?” All of that is such a waste of time, because I’m not focusing on how good can I get my reading program, or how good can I get this or that. It just pulls us away from that. Now we have to do it, but to bring it together is an amazing task if you’re going to do it effectively. I’ve never done it by myself. I very much appreciate input from everybody.
At that time, in that year, I had an executive principal who was assigned to the school, which was a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant thing to do. Edmund Oropez was assigned to the campus at the same time as I came in. There were so many issues that he was able to fend off while we were able to work. I didn’t have a lot of experience, so I was able to take from his experience. They allowed us to work together, and the district supported us. This was very unique, because I’ve seen it work in other places where the district comes in and slaps a plan on and expects you to stick with it because “we’ve paid so much” or “we’ve done this or that, and you have to do it because it’s worked somewhere else.” They don’t value the opinions of the people on the ground, but the stars aligned that year. The board listened. The superintendent was in her first year and she came in battling some very tough things, but she listened. My area superintendent listened and allowed us to do what we thought best, and what we thought best made some people very nervous, because we were doing some crazy things. The webs were complex, and the interventions and what we were going to do – it could have scared people. “Are we really willing to take a bet on a new principal in this school that has been in such poor health for so long? Are we ready to risk it?” Well, they did, and the path just came open.
AC: That’s one thing the book really makes clear: that there wasn’t some big crazy plan, and that you didn’t have endless resources, that you couldn’t hire 5,000 teachers or give everyone a tutor. That you had to say, “Well, what do we do with three sticks and a rubber band?” How do you, as a principal, stand back and say: “OK, the tough decisions have to be made. We know the math and science scores are low for African-American students, so we have to put our resources there. We know our English as a second language scores are low, so we have to put the resources there”?
AG: You’ve been in situations where people have asked you, “OK, there’s so many of you on a boat, but it can only hold so many people.” That’s what it feels like. That’s where it breaks your heart and your spirit and your soul, because how do you decide who you throw out? You can’t. So you’ve got to see how many rubber bands and how many sticks and how far you can stretch. But you have to make some hard decisions, and it’s not without a broken heart, and it’s not without knowing that I’m going to come back for you. You’ve seen so many movies, and it’s just like that. But is it humanly possible? Can you make those promises, and can you really come back for them? Again, I’m praying. I don’t have enough arms, and I don’t have enough strength, and I don’t have enough to come back, so send something that will help me to be there.
I have a joking relationship with my faith. All I ask is that I have a parking space at the front. That’s how I know you’re listening to me. You can ask anybody that I know about where I park. It’s always in the front. If the space opens up, I always know that, if I have to make a hard decision like that, that somehow something good is going to happen, because I had to leave you until I come back. So I don’t feel like I’m throwing someone out of the boat, because I have my toe over the edge and you can hold on to it until someone jumps by themselves and we can pull you in. Those are impossible decisions that they expect you to make, because we’re the teacher types. It’s almost like Miss America: We want world peace and to help everybody and teach everybody. So to expect us to make those decisions is really crazy. Again, it’s like being on a puzzle piece. When you zoom in and you’re right on it, you can’t see what you’re doing to other kids. But when you zoom out and you’re able to look down, you see how when you try to do good things and set high standards, that you’re really hurting other kids.
AC: In the book, Michael talks about the big basketball game between Reagan and LBJ, which he portrays as a real high point and a turning point in the story. Looking back the 2010 school year, what were the highest and the lowest points for you?
AG: I had been a teacher at LBJ, so that rivalry had been a crazy rivalry before. Just getting people out there to be spirited about us coming together, because they’re really like our sister school. We do something, they’re there, and they do something, we’re there. It’s the same families, brothers and sisters right across the highway. But again, just like the parking space in the front, the game was just a sign that it was possible. That one moment in time, it just lifted the spirits of the kids and the teachers. It was an unbelievable moment, and you had to be there to see the energy. I think that energy helped to propel us forward.
The lowest point? In that year, there were people here from everywhere. State agencies, federal agencies, people that were breathing on this side and this side. The commissioner came to our school, and I was going to have 15 minutes to tell him why we needed to keep the school open. The night before, I was nervous that I wouldn’t have the right words in 15 minutes to save the school and all those teachers that trusted to come there and start their careers. Worst of all, they would have to send the kids somewhere else, and they would be coming from a school that failed, and nobody would love them. They’d say, “Those kids, mm-mm.” What was going to come out of my mouth in those 15 minutes, that was really hard. Teachers were crying, they were scared they were going to lose jobs. You know, “Oh, you came from that school?” But I think he heard what I said.
I’m the same person. It was just: “Don’t cry girl. How can I make my classrooms look better that day, how can I make my teachers smarter, how can I make my kids smarter on that day, to make him see the value of saving it?”
AC: Whatever you said, it worked.
AG: Today. It’s moment by moment. When you look at a city, any city, you’re going to have a part of the community that struggles that way, and until the community changes, you’ll be faced with the same battles over and over again. We just need to get better and faster, to get the kids higher and higher. That’s our goal each and every day.
This article appears in August 17 • 2012.
