From failing to flourishing: One school’s transformation

On a busy Long Island City street dominated by countless automotive repair shops and gas stations, the inside walls of a large brick building are decorated with black and white print-outs. They proudly proclaim this combination elementary and middle school’s recent achievement to all those who walk through the halls: the city has given it the highest grade possible.
“We are an ‘A’ school and we are not going back,” reads one of the signs.
P.S. 111 Jacob Blackwell School long had a reputation as a dumping ground for the children of the surrounding neighborhood’s poor families. It is now a much different place. With guidance, organization and empowerment of its students, the school has managed to turn itself around.
“This place used to be a household name,” said Yvette Taylor, who has lived nearby for the past 18 years and has two daughters attending the school. “Don’t put your child in 111, they’d say.”
From 1997 to 2001, the New York State Education Department labeled P.S. 111 as a School Under Registration Review (SURR), commonly referred to as a failing school. The state gives this designation to schools that have failed to meet certain accountability criteria and are in serious need of improvement. The students at P.S. 111 had been achieving below standards for years, and there were high levels of violent incidences relative to its small size.
When Principal Randy Seabrook arrived in June 2005 - making her the sixth person to have that job in four years - she immediately started making sweeping changes to improve student behavior, collaboration between teachers and administrators and data analysis.
“I had to change everyone’s mindset about why we’re here,” she said.
P.S. 111 offered only pre-kindergarten through fifth grade at the time. To ease the overcrowding in neighboring junior high schools, P.S. 111 started opening its doors to older students.
Today, most of the 393 students are black and Hispanic and hail from the nearby Queensbridge Houses and Ravenswood Houses - the two largest public housing developments in Queens. More than 90 percent of the children at the school qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.
Seabrook explained that the atmosphere was hostile and volatile when she first arrived.
“The children and parents had an us-versus-them mentality, and the school was full of animosity, mistrust and miscommunication,” she said. “There was confrontation instead of conversation.”
Immediately, Seabrook began working with teachers who had felt under siege by previous administrations and lacked professional development. She fought to gain the trust of teachers and encouraged them to take a more active role in shaping the school’s future.
Despite the students’ poor marks in the past, “I also had to help the teachers understand that students were capable of learning,” Seabrook said.
One teacher, Grace Ballas, described the increased collaboration between teachers and administrators since Seabrook’s arrival.
“The staff feels comfortable. We don’t fear the principal,” Ballas said. “We’re like a family.”
In a big turnaround from its failing school designation - which meant it had to shape up or risk losing its autonomy - P.S. 111 became an Empowerment School in 2007. This allowed principal Seabrook more administrative power and control in exchange for more accountability.
“Teachers now have the freedom to look at each kid’s individual needs,” said Maria Deviccaro, the school’s data specialist and technology coordinator.
In order to address the discipline problems plaguing the school, Seabrook held town hall-style meetings where she and teachers developed new consistent rules and discussed the underlying reasons why children act out.
“We had to change the way students felt,” Seabrook said. “And let them know they were valued.”
Seabrook admits that suspension rates have increased since she arrived (because they never suspended anyone before), but with few consequences, the students knew they could get away with bad behavior.
According to Ballas, a lower turnover rate for teachers and administrators has also contributed to a decreased number of incidents and improvement in the students’ behavior in general. She estimated that she was one of 27 new teachers when she began in 1996, compared to only five this year.
“The kids didn’t invest before,” said Deviccaro, who sees stability as one of the biggest changes that has taken place since she started working at the school 11 years ago. “Now the kids realize that the teachers and administration are there for them, and they’ll still be there next year.”
While the school has long emphasized standardized testing, Seabrook’s arrival also meant an even greater focus on data. Every classroom now contains a data notebook with files on each child, which the teachers then use to adjust their lessons accordingly.
“A heavy focus on data levels the playing field,” Seabrook said. “The teachers and children know when they’re making progress.”
So far, the changes have yielded results: student performance went from a score of 6.3 (out of 25 possible points) in 2006-07 to 14.7 in 2007-08. In mid-September of this year, New York City’s Department of Education awarded P.S. 111 with an “A” grade, a jump up from last year’s “B.”
However, success has not come without shortcomings. The city measures schools based on year-to-year progress, a policy that has been highly criticized citywide by some parents and teachers who worry that overall performance gets overlooked.
The school’s poor performance in some areas is hard to ignore. Literacy, for example, continues to be a problem, Seabrook admits. Indeed, test scores lag behind those of similar schools, particularly in English Language Arts, where no grade scored above 37 percent last year.
P.S. 111 is also one of three schools in District 30 labeled as a “school planning for restructuring” after Hispanic students failed to achieve sufficient annual yearly progress in English Language Arts.
Still, P.S. 111’s “A” grade is a major break from the past and one that Seabrook thinks deserves to be celebrated.
“It means we’re on the right track, and the things we’re doing are effective,” she said. “It is a sign now that this school is different from before.”
Yvette Taylor, along with many other parents, teachers and students, is thrilled.
“P.S. 111 has been made into a place where kids want to come in the morning,” she said. “[The ‘A’ grade] has given the children integrity.”
Seabrook would like to see this school compete against all the other schools in the city one day, regardless of what tax bracket students’ parents are in.
“I think this school deserves to be the star of District 30,” Seabrook said. “We’ve come a long way. The school just needed a little attention. It just needed a little love.”