Retiring Paul Revere Principal Has Unfinished Business

Paul Revere Middle School principal Fern Somoza has enjoyed a long and satisfying career in education, she told the Palisadian-Post. Her June 30 retirement will mark some 40 years in the field and almost six at the middle school attended by many Palisadians. In a recent letter to parents, she revealed her plan to retire, which includes retention of her resignation letter until a suitable replacement is found. For many, it was the first they had heard about it.

Of the school’s growing list of accomplishments, Somoza wishes she could see the iPad program through to the end. Dubbed the Common Core Technology Project, the brand new initiative is giving the district an opportunity to provide a different kind of learning experience to its students through the use of technology.

Some problems Somoza saw with CCTP — which began this school year — was that the district had no set policy for distributing the tablets.

“We were coming up with our own plans for deployment,” Somoza said.

In order to let the kids take the iPads home, a plan had to be developed. For one, how would lost or stolen iPads be dealt with?

“We met with parents and students in October concerning the responsibilities and duties of having these iPads,” Somoza said.

“Other schools weren’t doing that.”

Training for the devices was also limited. The Los Angeles Unified School District suggested Somoza attend an Apple workshop in Downtown Los Angeles, which she thought didn’t translate well to educational use.

Somoza hounded Apple until the technology company sent its technicians to the school to help formulate training sessions.

From there it was all downhill, Somoza said. Teachers were learning how to use the iPad as an effective teaching tool and then showing each other what they’d learned.

“Teachers were teaching teachers,” Somoza said.

Somoza had just come back from winter break in January when she received notification that she’d been chosen to sit on the district’s steering committee for formulating policy on the iPad program.

“I didn’t ask for that,” Somoza said.

On April 21, the school will have students and teachers turn on all their iPads to see if their network can handle the load of the devices running online simultaneously.

To acquaint herself with the school when she began in 2008, Somoza would take a walk around the campus about once a week and stop in each of the classrooms, which surprised her teachers.

“I was so pleasantly surprised when I met the staff here,” Somoza said. “It’s even better now. I’ve never worked with so many terrific teachers. They’re really people who listen to my ideas. Some of them made changes in the way they instructed, others showed me what they were doing and they were so willing to share with me.”

Somoza wasn’t happy with the condition of the school facilities, which had been neglected for some time.

“That was the first thing that hit me,” Somoza said.

The plant manager was new at the time and the gardener was doing the best he could with what he had, Somoza said. The garden in the back of the school was completely weeded over and tree roots were lifting some of the buildings off their foundations.

Some of the science teachers used sections of the garden house, but other than that it was rarely used and overrun with weeds.

“There were also groundhogs digging up the joint,” Somoza said.

The garden ponds were mosquito breeding grounds full of algae and the school’s farm had sick animals with shabby living conditions.

The roofing above several classrooms leaked after it rained, the lighting was poor and the school’s paint was deteriorating. Some of the bungalows had also been abandoned and sat in disrepair.

“The school had been let go, but they had just built the beautiful quad in the middle, which is really nice,” Somoza said. “So they had this gorgeous quad and the classrooms were leaking. One room had, like, a lake in it.”

At the time, the Los Angeles Unified School District was in the grips of the worst budget crisis seen in the district’s more than 50-year history. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced a $14.5 billion state budget deficit and planned for $4.8 billion in education cuts after naming 2008 “The Year of Education” one year before. LAUSD was looking at a $460 million budget shortfall, according to district reports.

“At one point we lost 23 of 80 teachers at Paul Revere,” Somoza said. “[LAUSD] talked about positions like they aren’t people. … That’s not my way.”

At Paul Revere, teachers will always have the opportunity to apply for a position, rather than having the district place people there, Somoza said. The school formed a hiring committee to ensure the internal policy would stick.

The district’s budget deficit threatened Paul Revere with increased class size — LAUSD recommended 42.5 kids per class, “but that’s ridiculous,” Somoza said.

Her number one priority then was to save the jobs of her teachers.

“Block grants helped,” Somoza said. “We were lucky the previous administration didn’t know how to spend the carryover from previous years because we were able to use it.”

With the help of Blakely Coe and others, Somoza brought Jupiter Grades to Paul Revere, which gave the school the opportunity to post grades and reach out to parents electronically. That really streamlined the communication process, Somoza said.

The principal scheduled mandatory teacher meetings and helped facilitate interdisciplinary teaching. She frequently met with department chairs and oversaw professional development common core programs.

Somoza used the business strategy of continuous improvement, bringing focus to areas that needed improvement.

English learners had no support at the middle school previously, Somoza said. There were other subgroups that were also not achieving. Somoza brought in a consultant who looked at the school’s raw data to develop curriculum meant to bolster their low-performers and raise test scores. As a result, the school’s Academic Performance Index scores increased.

Between the 2007-08 and 2012-13 school years, Paul Revere’s API scores have increased some 67 points to 904 out of a possible 1,000, according to district reports.

The school often outperforms the district average in most categories.

Additionally, Somoza brought clubs to Paul Revere in order to make its more than 2,000 students feel like they belong.

“We made the school one,” Somoza said.