Editorial: Time for real solutions at Hiram Johnson High

Five years ago, Sacramento's Hiram Johnson High School was a disaster. The school had the lowest scores of any California high school. Scheduling was a mess. The school had a reputation for gang violence.

Then came a new principal, Lynne Tafoya, who had spent her career in the district. She improved discipline, produced a workable master schedule, built relationships with teachers and launched an ambitious plan for transformation – changing curriculum and teacher training, focusing on ninth and 10th graders and English learners. The school's Academic Performance Index improved from 519 in 2002-2003 to 602 in 2006-2007, still below the state's 800 standard but a clear improvement.

The school appeared to be turning a corner.

Then came summer 2007. With turnover in the central district office – four administrators went to other districts or retired – Superintendent Maggie Mejia tapped Tafoya at the end of June to become a districtwide administrator for academic achievement. Hiram Johnson got an interim principal.

So, here we are in December, and the school still lacks a full complement of qualified teachers. This is terrible for students, who don't get a chance to redo their high school years. The time they lose is gone forever. Under state law, the school is supposed to fill vacancies within the first four weeks of school, enough time to allow enrollments to level off.

Faced with a complaint from the law firm that brought the Williams lawsuit, which led to a landmark settlement addressing inequities in California schools, the district finally is acting.

The district attributes the mess to two things:

• Enrollment projections. Hiram Johnson had gone from 2,700 students in 2002-2003 to 1,900 in 2006-2007, a decline of about 160 a year. The district projected enrollment this year of 1,664 but got 246 more.

• Transfers of three teachers to other schools just before school started.

But neither issue explains why the district waited until Nov. 15 to post recruiting ads to fill positions.

So what to do? For one solution, the district has reassigned students to classes that have fewer than 32 students, which is no solution at all. The district can't simply shuffle kids around to fill empty seats if the classes don't meet students' educational needs. For example, the district can't just take English learners out of an English class and put them into a landscaping class just to avoid hiring an English teacher.

Here's a real solution: The district needs to drop everything and get the situation at Hiram Johnson straightened out. Send in a team to help rework the master schedule and place needed teachers in the right spots.

Moreover, while the district is having a hard time hiring teachers for Hiram Johnson, the school board is considering opening yet another high school. That's simply folly.

The district administration and school board need a new sense of priorities. In particular, they need a sense of urgency about the situation at Hiram Johnson. They should drop plans for a new high school, which has proved to be a great distraction, and concentrate on the problem at hand: Hiram Johnson students are being shortchanged.