TeWinkle ideas meet dissent

COSTA MESA — When the Newport-Mesa Unified School District held a meeting to ask the public what to change at TeWinkle Middle School, the answer was, for the most part, not much.

TeWinkle was the last Newport-Mesa district school this month to hold a public hearing after being placed on a federal list for corrective action. Three schools in the district — TeWinkle, and Pomona and Wilson elementary schools — are on year three of the No Child Left Behind Act's Program Improvement list, meaning that they must make changes in the next year or risk sanctions.

Of the three schools, TeWinkle posted the lowest federal marks in 2006, with its test scores falling short in nine out of 25 categories. The speakers at Thursday night's meeting, however, voiced only a few criticisms of the school. More often, they took aim at the district and government, both of which they said had treated TeWinkle unfairly.

"The picture is only of a small part of a jigsaw puzzle," teacher Larry Winters said. "It does not cover the entire scene."

Newport-Mesa formed a panel consisting of teachers, parents and others to evaluate the three schools after the government slated them for corrective action in August. The panel's draft report recommended that TeWinkle lengthen its school day and appoint an outside expert to aid administrators.

Both recommendations came under fire at Thursday night's meeting, which was attended almost entirely by teachers and staffers. Science teacher Pam Finamore said that, by her calculations, TeWinkle students spent more time in class than the state requirement. Tommie Griffon, one of the few parents in attendance, implored the district to keep the early dismissal on Fridays, saying it boosted student morale at the end of the week.

"If you take away early-out Fridays, you're going to have over a thousand very, very unhappy kids," she said.

Fellow parent Cynthia Blackwell praised Principal Dan Diehl as a strong leader, saying that her son referred to him as "the new sheriff in town." Most of TeWinkle's problems, she said, arose from unmotivated students rather than staff.

"There is too much social promotion happening in the feeder schools," she said. "We have students in the seventh, eighth grades who do not have the tools they need to be successful."

A few of the teachers present did cite areas for improvement. Denise Newcomer said the school needed more funding for technology, while Finamore suggested reducing class sizes. Jim North echoed Blackwell's concerns, saying that teachers could only do so much to turn around students with little interest in learning.

"We will not let them fail," he said. "We will do everything in our power to find ways to catch them."