Valley High School

I had one evening's notice that I was to be transferred from being principal of the Evening School to Valley. Actually, the two principals involved swapped jobs, and I reported for duty on the first day of staff orientation. The fellow that I relieved, took all the school information with him and left me a bare office. For the next six months reports due to central office either were late or missing entirely since I had no material to work with. I gradually got adjusted and in the swim of things. Best of all ,I got to take my assistant principal, Peggy Piper, from the night school with me. While at the night school we had created an alternative program for ninth graders, and we were able to take that new program with us to Valley, as well with its director/teacher Eartha Lynn. In addition, I had an administrative trainee at an earlier school, and she was now an assistant principal at Valley. Leah Gutierrez was a wonderful assistant, and we worked together for thirteen of the fourteen years that I was employed in the Albuquerque Public Schools.

So, although it was quite a surprise to be at a different school, I quickly realized that there were significant challenges. Eighty percent of the students were members from one minority group or another with our primary group being Hispanic, falling into groups that could trace their ancestry in the area back over 300 years or more, along with recent arrivals from south of the border. Our other largest minority group consisted of native Americans. About 20 percent of the students were Anglo At best, maybe 20% of our graduates attended any college, and we had a terrible dropout rate and a significant gang problem. In spite of all this, the school community was very supportive, and the environment was a delight in which to work. The teachers were dedicated, and many had spent their entire career teaching at this school. My task was how to improve the education at Valley and build on the parts of our school that were working.

In 1989 the superintendent informed me of a possible grant program being established by the General Electric Foundation. We had a GE Aircraft Engines plant in Albuquerque, and this large corporation was interested in developing future engineers from minority student populations. We set up an in-house committee and began to flesh out a proposal that we could submit to the GE Foundation in hopes that it would get funded. The Foundation sent us Phyllis McGrath to help us with our proposal development. She was in charge of this grant program and led us through the components we needed to put in the proposal, as well as encouraged us to institute our own unique ideas. We faxed our completed proposal to the Foundation and held our collective breaths.

Some weeks later we received a call from Mrs. McGrath that Valley High School was the first school in the country selected to participate in the program, and we would receive a grant of $750,000 to be spent over the next five years. Our goal was to double the number of our graduates who attended college. How could we meet this goal? It seemed like an impossible task at the beginning. We formed the Valley Academy for students interested in helping us achieve this goal. Many of the ideas we had put forth worked or were modified, although some did not. The foundation through Mrs. McGrath always encouraged us to move forward and to experiment with new ideas. Around the second or third year of the program we met our goal, and by the time I retired, nearly 80% of our graduates were attending college. Many of our graduates took advanced placement courses in our school and arrived in college with their credits. Some of our students began college as sophomores. What exciting changes we observed!