Features

SAN ANSELMO – Like 70 percent of America’s high school students, junior Jesse Gross is one of about 1,000 other teen-agers at his school. But unlike some of his peers, Jesse doesn’t feel isolated, insignificant or swallowed up by the huge school. 

Jesse attends Academy X, about 80 students and a small group of teachers, within Sir Francis Drake High School. 

It’s part of a national movement that’s gaining steam with each school shooting. 

“It’s nearly impossible to be an outsider in a community like this,” Gross said. “No one’s really shunned, and in this intimate an environment it would be hard not to notice someone who was that angry.” 

Backed by a growing body of research and a sense of desperation, large high schools are breaking themselves down into smaller, more personal communities. They’ve won the financial support of the federal government and several major foundations, which, in the wake of the Columbine school shooting, believe smaller could mean better and safer. 

“I really believe many of the (other) things we’re doing in school reform are just so much shifting of deck chairs on the Titanic, so long as we continue to herd children into huge impersonal schools,” said researcher Kathleen Cotton of the Northwest Regional Education Laboratory in Portland. 

About 70 percent of U.S. students attend high schools of more than 1,000 students, according to the U.S. Department of Education, and many attend schools with 2,000 to 5,000 students. 

Reform-minded educators taking a fresh look at most American high schools see factories instead. Each year, hundreds of teens are inserted into a school, scheduled into standard rotations of course work, and, hopefully, squeezed out at age 18 with a diploma. But many get lost among their thousands of peers. 

Cities such as New York, Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia are now knee-deep in the small school movement. Oakland has made small schools a top priority. San Francisco’s new superintendent is proposing breaking schools into smaller learning communities, as are high school leaders across the Bay Area. 

Spurred by the deadly shooting at Columbine High, Congress passed a bill to nurture the development of smaller learning communities. It gave $45 million to help 354 schools begin breaking down in size this year and will give another $125 million in December. 

California school districts won 38 of those grants. Bay Area winners included all six high schools in Mount Diablo Unified, Sir Francis Drake High, Berkeley High, Pinole Valley High, Balboa High in San Francisco, five Oakland high schools and Antioch High. 

Foundations also have stepped in, particularly the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which last year gave $37 million to develop smaller learning communities in California. 

Students in the academies usually take three to four classes together with the academy’s small group of teachers. But many other students at those schools are in a traditional high school program. 

Sir Francis Drake’s academies serve about three quarters of its students, but the school plans to use grant money to make sure all students belong to an academy. 

“This environment has brought a lot of personality out of me,” Jesse said. “I think I would have kept to myself a lot more if I hadn’t joined one of these academies.”