What should school districts do when a school fails to meet academic performance targets year after year after year?

Here's one dramatic option: Close the school and reopen it with a new principal, new staff and new curriculum.

That's what San Juan Unified did with its lowest performing school, Jonas Salk Middle School. This was, and remains, a school with 90 percent of the students in poverty. Over the years, the school would launch improvement plans only to be thwarted by high staff turnover (as many as 15 of 34 teachers were new at any given time).

As San Juan's then-director of middle schools, Sue Hulsey, put it, "People got tired. Staff was working really hard but not seeing improvement."

A newly elected school board in 2005 wasn't content with business as usual, and voted in 2006 to close and reopen Salk as a high-tech academy with a new principal. Teachers were asked to reapply for their jobs or move on.

The old Salk had an Academic Performance Index in the 500s in the seven years before it closed (on a scale of 200 to 1,000). The new Salk improved to 614 in its first year and to 662 in its second year. That's still short of the state goal of 800, but the school clearly is making progress.

Where Salk four years ago had half of the suspensions in the district, it is now one of the most well-behaved schools in the district, because students don't want to lose access to their computer time. Teachers across the district now are looking to Salk for ways to infuse technology into learning.

What made this overhaul work?

• Relationship with the teachers union.

The district negotiated an agreement with the union where teachers were part of a team that selected a new principal and vice principal. They were part of the design team. They were part of the team that hired new staff.

As part of the agreement, teachers applying to the new high-tech academy had to have a knowledge of or interest in applying technology to classroom learning. They had to make a commitment of extra time: days of training before school opening each year, one hour of training each week during the school year, and advisories at the beginning and end of each day and in a 25-minute period once a week. They had to agree to use data to measure student progress. They had to agree to stay at the school for three years.

For the additional time commitment, they would receive a $2,000 stipend each year.

Of 34 teachers at the school at closing, only eight were rehired for the new high-tech academy. Most of the others stayed in the district, transferring to other schools.

In the end, the school was able to recruit a corps of experienced teachers committed to technology as a learning tool, about half from within and half from outside the district.

• A relationship with Apple Computer and a computer for each child.

Apple helped with training, showing staff what other schools were doing, and provided computers. The school started with mobile computer labs (called COWS, or "computers on wheels"). But now the school has 650 laptops, digital cameras and iPods.

Students receive a laptop each morning and return it each afternoon. "Having a computer is a great leveler for our students of poverty," said Hulsey, who is now executive director of San Juan's K-8 schools. "It gives them access to the world."

San Juan Unified's reconstitution of Salk shows the bold action that local school boards, superintendents and teachers can take when a school simply is not serving students as it should. But it's not the only option. School districts have an array of dramatic actions they can take to turn around chronically underperforming schools.

Next: Closing and reopening a school as a public charter school: Sacramento City Unified's Sacramento High School.