A Man of Principle

A man spends 25 years in a school system, and he still has to deal with broken copying machines.

The holiday assembly is another chance to promote parental involvement, and Pannell stresses that parents are encouraged to come see their children perform songs and dances. He also arranges for a local congregation, Grace Apostolic Church, to give out dozens of huge holiday food baskets for needy families.

As families are called up to the stage to receive their holiday bounty, Pannell helps distribute boxes filled with turkeys, canned goods, cereal, rice, and macaroni. As a church lady begins preaching to the audience—"Please keep in mind that Jesus died for our sins"—Pannell contrives to disappear. As grandmothers, mothers, and a few fathers start hauling away the boxes, the church lady breaks into song: "Always remember Jesus, Jesus/Always remember Jesus, Jesus."

Pannell is still nowhere to be seen because the annual food giveaway involves a tradeoff: The church wants to save souls, and Pannell wants families fed. He knows that some parents, staff, and students are Seventh-Day Adventists, Muslims, or adherents of other denominations who might be put off by the religious content. But he's willing to risk their anger if it means getting food for hungry families. He just disappears for the evangelical part of the program so he won't appear to be endorsing a church-state marriage.

A highlight of the program is Lieutenant General Patrick Hughes, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, donning a red Santa hat and reading "The Night Before Christmas," with children from the Head Start class playing the roles of mice and reindeer. But the grand finale comes when the curtain rises to reveal Pannell playing a soft, moody "Silent Night" on the piano. He slows the tempo and continues playing as he delivers his holiday sermon to the children:

"Boys and girls. This is one of the happiest times of the year, and one of the most serious times. I wonder if you know that you are children only once. And if you know that Santa Claus only comes when you are small and only when you are good....As you go home, I want you to think about everything you did in 1997, and everything you need to change in 1998. I want you to think about your grades and whether you can do better. And I want you to remember that you have teachers and school administrators who love you, and parents who struggle to take care of you. We want you to go home and put your arms around your parents and say, 'Mommy, I love you....Daddy, I love you.' And we want you to know that we here at Malcolm X love you."

After the assembly, Pannell exchanges hugs with dozens of students and a stream of teachers he encounters on their way home for the winter break. An hour later, the custodians are cleaning up, everyone else has gone home, and Pannell is getting ready to close school for the holidays. A thin, worn-out woman in a shiny leather jacket approaches him, sobbing because she arrived too late for her food basket. Pannell calms her down and arranges for her to get one.

When she leaves, Pannell closes his door and leans back in his chair so far that it looks like it will tip over. "I think this may be my last year," he says.

As he is preparing to leave, around 5 p.m., Pannell is approached by a young workingman who lives nearby. He tells Pannell that a 2nd grader from Malcolm X has no Christmas presents this year. Actually, he doesn't think the boy has much food either. "It's pitiful," he says. "The kid is knocking on my door, and he asks my girlfriend for food. The mother is a crack addict....She gets her check on the 31st, and it's gone in a few days."

Pannell's face is ashen, and he asks the man to please call Child Protective Services. But the man winces and says he does not want to get involved. So Pannell thanks him for the information, makes the call himself, and tells the city agency that this family should be investigated. He is put on hold.

A man spends 25 years in a school system, and he still has to deal with broken copying machines. So as 1998 begins at Malcolm X, two of the three copiers are down, and The Principal is struggling to get out the first weekly teachers' bulletin of the year. Much of the four-page communique is mundane, but part of it is meant to be inspirational, so he puts it in capital letters:

"AS THE NEW YEAR UNFOLDS, PLEASE KNOW THAT YOUR WORK IS THE MOST IMPORTANT WORK IN THE WORLD. EVERY PERSON THAT CAN READ, WRITE, COMPUTE, AND MAKE MILLIONS OF $ HAS TO THANK A TEACHER. GOOD LUCK IN THIS NEW YEAR, AND GODSPEED TO ALL. YOU ARE TRULY WONDERFUL PEOPLE!"

"A principal has to have people who share the same responsibility, the same vision, the same drive."

John Pannell,
principal

Teachers make or break the school, and Pannell is careful about hiring. When the school year started, he had five vacancies for various specialists, but when headquarters called to ask if he needed jobs filled, he said no. It was a bureaucratic trick: He did not want to waste time with the caliber of candidates usually supplied through headquarters; he'd prefer doing his own search with his own network of contacts.

Over the years, Pannell has lost some of his best teachers to retirement, to burnout, and to suburban jurisdictions where the stress is lower and the pay higher. In January, he decides to rehire three retired Malcolm X teachers who are particularly good at teaching reading. (The hirings occur only after Pannell, in a heated telephone call to the central office, gets the three teachers recertified. "Why do you have to make everything so damn complicated?" he barks into the phone.) The rehirings are part of the overall strategy he outlines when he gathers his staff to talk about the tests looming in the spring.

"We have to increase our students' scores," he tells the January teachers meeting. "We have no choice."

"Let's be real. Let's be honest," he says. "All your work. All the visits to students' homes. All the xeroxing. All the hours of work you do at home. All of this is not as important as test scores. This is what we are judged on."

Pannell surprises some of them by declaring, "I believe in teaching to the test"—he is speaking aloud what school administrators are often loath to admit—and he proceeds to outline his multipart plan for doing it. Each teacher would start by charting every child's raw scores from last October's practice test in each specific skill area, such as word identification, word meaning, sentence reading, and phonetic and structural analysis. Teachers thereby could determine in which skills the greatest number of students in their classes showed the greatest deficiency and tailor their lessons accordingly.

Even that would not be enough, though. "I'm going to be frank with you," he says. "I want you to teach after school. I can pay all of you, but we have to produce. Can you handle it? Will you do it? Do you want to do it?"

The room buzzes. Some of the teachers seem surprised. Pannell says he has decided to resume after-school tutoring, along with other programs, at the end of January even though someone slashed two of his tires again just after the New Year. His December warning letter to the community did produce several tips, even the name of an alleged culprit, but he decided it wasn't worth pursuing.

Pannell had planned all along to restart the after-school activities, particularly the tutoring and homework assistance, which drew almost 200 students in the fall. He is not sure how many families really want tutoring and how many just use it as free child care, but he knows that many children have no quiet place at home and no parent to help with homework. The tutoring is also a potentially important weapon in the fight to improve test scores. Using federal grant money, he can offer teachers $15 an hour for after-school tutoring. Now he needs at least half a dozen teachers to participate.

"I need your help," he tells them, sounding weary again. "The only people with a one-year contract are the principals. A principal has to have people who share the same responsibility, the same vision, the same drive." In the past, he says, a principal's job security was often based on popularity. "Now, the system is requiring us to be honest with ourselves.

"Are we all on the same page?"

The teachers nod in agreement.

Pannell summons up some extra energy and sounds enthusiastic. With the new charts of the raw scores, with the three new teachers who will help teach the teachers how to teach reading, with after-school tutoring and with extra computer practice-test time, Malcolm X will raise its scores.

"If we work at this every single day, we will get there," he says. "If we don't do it, our children will fail."

"Can we do this?" Pannell asks.

"Yes," the teachers answer.

"Won't we do this?"

"Yes."

Afterward, half a dozen teachers come forward. They will offer their time to tutor after school at Malcolm X.