Principal Stephen Redmond Brings New Energy to Parkway Heights

"What's my name?" asked Stephen Redmond, scanning the faces of the nervous-looking sixth-graders sitting in a classroom of Parkway Heights Middle School on the first day of school. "I want to hear everyone say 'Mr. Redmond.' "

Redmond, at age 38, is already a veteran principal.  After working as a classroom math teacher for three years at Benjamin Franklin Middle School in San Francisco and at Alta Loma Middle School in South San Francisco, he became the assistant principal of Alta Loma in 2002, principal of Lafayette Elementary School in Oakland in 2005, and principal of Baden High School, South San Francisco's continuation school, in 2008.  Now he's starting his first year at Parkway Heights, and he has high expectations.

"I want the high schools to say, `Wow, you came from Parkway.'  I want it to be the norm."

Parkway's enrollment has dropped to 485 students, down from 577 two years ago.  This is largely due to the fact that parents have the right to send their children to other middle schools, like Westborough and Alta Loma, when their local school is underperforming, as Parkway has been for the last seven years. 

Redmond knows the only way to get students—and, by extension, education dollars—back to his school is to raise test scores.  Parkway's math and language arts scores have increased over three years like the city's other middle schools, but scores still lag behind the city's other middle schools by as much as 12 percentage points in English/language arts and 32 percentage points in math.

 In the 2008-2009 school year, 71 percent of Parkway's students were economically disadvantaged and 36 percent were English learners.

Superintendent Howard S. Cohen chose Redmond for the job after the previous principal, Jay Rowley, retired.

"Parkway has been in program improvement for seven years, and they really have not been successful at showing adequate progress," Cohen said.  "Steve Redmond is a person who's had a lot of experience working with underperforming kids in schools.  He's a person who has very much the needs of the students in mind as well as how to support teachers."

At Baden, which specializes in students who've had trouble in traditional high school, Redmond quadrupled the number of graduates from five to 23 the first year he was there.  He thinks middle school is a key period in students' development.

"I just think middle school is where we lose them," he said.  "In elementary school, I had kids who I thought would succeed but dropped when they got to middle school.  It's about building those relationships with the kids and having them still like school and want to learn."

Redmond plans to supplement relationship building with a strong focus on improving classroom instruction.  The school district has adopted a series of initiatives this year that emphasize data-driven instruction that requires accountability from students and teachers.  Teachers will write tests together and compare scores across classrooms, check regularly for student comprehension during lessons and focus each month on five standards from the California Standards Tests  and drill them in through repetition.

"We should be making sure that when a student comes in the classroom for 47 minutes, they are tired when they leave," Redmond said.

Redmond set the tone for achievement early this year by walking from classroom to classroom on the first day of school and telling students what he expects from them this year.

"I just want to make sure everyone's on the same page," he said to the students, standing at the front of the room. "Our focus needs to be to learn."

Between classrooms, he saw a student standing outside in the breezeway.

"Why are you standing in the hall?" Redman asked, looming over him.

The student looked at the ground.  "I got kicked out of class."

"On the first day?  Is this going to be a pattern?"

"No," the student said, scuffing the ground with his shoe.

One reason Redmond visits classrooms on the first day is to give students the impression that, "You never know when Mr. Redmond's going to pop in."  He especially wants to make an impression on the sixth graders, who tend to follow the example of the older students.

Though Parkway has a long way to go, Principal Redmond is thinking big.

"I think things are coming together for Parkway to be the best middle school in the district, the best middle school in San Mateo County," he said.