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A turnaround at West Phila. High School

By Kristen A. Graham

Inquirer Staff Writer

If she had been a student at West Philadelphia High three years ago, Saliyah Cruz said, she would have been angry, too.

Every day, there were fights, fires, or gangs of students roaming hallways. It was a nightmare, said senior Sherese Lewis, a ninth grader that year.

“It was hard-core.”

Enter Cruz, now West’s principal. Though the school still has miles to go academically – only 12 percent of juniors were at grade level in reading last year and 9 percent in math – West has made a turnaround that even outsiders say is remarkable.

“It’s night and day,” said Cruz’s boss, Michael Silverman, the regional superintendent for high schools.

“There’s a sense of collaboration and commitment that you didn’t see in the past,” said Eric Braxton of the nonprofit Philadelphia Education Fund, who lives in West Philadelphia and has long been involved with the school.

But this year will be the real test for the confident, youthful-looking principal, who rarely sits at her desk before 3:30 p.m. She spent her first two years tackling the climate, Cruz said, and now it’s time to boost achievement.

“We’re out of excuses in terms of why West can’t get better academically,” said Cruz, 37, who called the test scores “deplorable.”

“If we don’t get better this year, I deserve to be fired.”

Her boss is banking on a lot from her. “I’m expecting them to at least double their scores,” Silverman said.

Fresh from a charter-school job, Cruz, who grew up in the Logan section of Philadelphia and graduated from Lincoln High School, was a district principal trainee in 2007. She taught English in public schools, then became an administrator at Freire Charter School in Center City.

She felt out of her element.

“I’m good with a certain kind of kid,” Cruz said. “The magnet schools don’t take them, and the charter schools don’t keep them for long. They all end up at the comprehensive high schools.”

Still, when she got the call with her district assignment, Cruz crossed her fingers and told her caller, “Anywhere but West.” She was young and had scant leadership experience. She didn’t want the system’s most out-of-control building. There was silence on the other end of the line – that was just where she was headed.

For the last few months of the 2006-07 school year, Cruz observed while two veteran principals ran West. That fall, the job was hers.

She brought sweeping change: She sealed the cavernous building’s top floor and spent most of her time in the hallways, lunchrooms, and stairwells – spots where students made trouble.

“I felt like some kind of ninja, stalking these kids,” Cruz said. But it worked. At the end of that year, fires and other serious incidents were down from 153 to 75.

She and her team broke the school down into academies, one for ninth graders and others based on themes such as urban studies and business. They introduced “restorative practices,” a program that goes beyond discipline. When conflicts arise, “circles” are used to discuss what happened and how to make amends.

Cruz and her staff say the program has helped set a calmer tone.

The school worked with the University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University, and nonprofits to get help with tutoring, extracurriculars, and other programs.