Thinking small

Published 9:00 pm Sunday, October 28, 2001

Grant helps Mariner reform as 6 ‘academies’

By Eric Stevick

Herald Writer

At Mariner High School, preparations are quietly underway for the delicate delivery of sextuplets.

In three years, Mariner will not be a school of 1,700 students but six academies of roughly 280 students each — a requirement of its $1 million Bill &Melinda Gates Foundation grant. The funds are for razing Mariner’s "shopping mall high school" model in favor of mini-campuses with less than 100 students per grade level.

"You are talking about a huge paradigm shift," said David Broadhead, a Mariner teacher on leave from the classroom to help the school, located south of Everett, convert to academies.

Yet six months after receiving the Gates grant, there are few obvious signs that the school is undergoing a transformation. Mariner is quietly laying the groundwork for academies in faculty meetings, conferences, visits to faraway schools and pleas with the Mukilteo School Board for more planning time.

There has even been a staff decision on how to make decisions, a process that will be used often in the years ahead as difficult personnel and course offering choices are made.

Last March, Mariner was one of 16 schools across the state to receive a Gates’ Washington State Achievers Program grant, which represents a 13-year, $100 million commitment. It provides money to redesign high schools, make students aware early on that they can go to college and provide scholarships.

"When we wrote the grant, we were very excited about the potential," said Tracy VanWinkle, Mariner principal. "You talk. You work. You have a great time at it and then you get it and it’s, oh my gosh, (now) what? Holy tamale."

Mariner is in the "holy tamale" stage, beginning a long process without a blueprint.

"It’s a lot of work, there’s no doubt about it," said Kyle Miller, education program officer for the Gates Foundation. "It’s going to take a lot of focus."

And time.

Today’s sixth-graders will be the first class to attend academies for four years. The academies will be small, rigidly separated schools within the large school. The goal, in part, is to form close, more personal connections where teachers will know all their students and their academic strengths and weaknesses.

Gates Foundation officials point to research findings that students, particularly those from low-income families, achieve at higher levels in well-structured smaller schools. Those schools typically have fewer discipline problems and lower dropout rates.

Mariner’s grant provides slightly more than $1 million for the school, including $836,600 over five years for academy-related training, travel, substitutes and visits to other schools. Another $167,000 is earmarked for getting middle school students thinking early on about going to college. Not included in those amounts is scholarship money that can provide up to $5,000 a year over four years.

Thus far, 81 Mariner seniors and recent graduates have been given scholarships, but it’s the students now in elementary and middle schools who will be most affected by the changes to the Mariner campus.

In coming months, Mariner will give updates to parents and the community, said VanWinkle.

"There is a lot going on, and I do understand that people don’t see it," she said.

In October alone: