A turnaround at West Phila. High School

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.

West is also getting help from a $6 million federal Department of Labor grant and the Philadelphia School District's Empowerment Schools initiative, aimed at the lowest-performing schools.

There has been a sea change in the teacher corps, too. After numerous departures in 2007 and 2008, the faculty has stabilized. Though a few teachers still come from training programs such as Teach for America, some have chosen to stay past their two-year commitment.

Cruz, who expects a lot from her staff, said she was glad some of the longtime faculty had left. She finds the new crew ambitious and committed: "They're not biding their time until they get to someplace better."

Many things are beyond teachers' control. Class sizes are still near 33, the maximum allowed in the teachers' contract.

Many students face poverty and drug abuse at home, and by the time they arrive at West they're already way behind in reading and math.

While Cruz can't control the outside world, she can support teachers.

Sunny Bavaro, an English teacher who arrived at West through the Philadelphia Teaching Fellows program a year and a half ago, said she believed the principal had struck the right note.

Bavaro lives in the neighborhood, and recalls the sound of helicopters overhead when the school was in crisis. Now, she said, she feels like part of the solution.

"There's a lot of teacher buy-in," she said. "The administration is very hands-on: 'What do you need? How can we get it for you?' I wouldn't be anywhere else."

Longtime West biology teacher Bruce Kelly said he was excited by the young teachers who seem to be putting down roots.

This is a defining moment for West, he said. "These children have the best chance for success that I've seen."

But challenges remain.

The school needs to work on math instruction, and its academies need stronger identities.

She and her staff also struggle to involve parents. She hopes that giving parents online access to their children's progress data will make a difference.

Cruz means business.

On the first day of school in September, she warned that anyone caught in a hallway during class time would get detention.

Some didn't believe her. Of the roughly 900 West students, 50 were hauled in. The next day, there were nine. The next school day, there were only three.

Senior Raynita Williams has one main gripe with the school, she said.

"Too many rules," said Williams, 17. But even she concedes that the rules have made a big difference from her freshman year. "West is real good now," Williams said.

Every morning at 6:30, a computer dials every West parent and asks: "Are you awake? Please get your child up and off to school." Students have three minutes to get to class, and teachers lock their doors when the bell rings. Students who make it on time hear the same script from teachers: "For your academic success, you need to be in class taking advantage of the opportunities to learn."

On a recent day, Cruz zoomed through the halls, walkie-talkie in hand. She greeted students by name - making sure a worried-looking boy knew where to get his bus pass, laughing with a girl in oversize sunglasses.

The principal is a straight shooter who sometimes comes across as blunt, but she can also be warm and teasing, especially around students.

Cruz poked her head into a seminar - a new spin on advisory, a longer period with a different focus for each grade. Last year, about 10 teachers gathered on Saturdays, without pay, to write a 100-page curriculum.

In this sophomore section, the theme is literacy, with 20 students reading books or discussing them with three teachers. The volumes range from teen fiction to books that seem more suited to elementary schoolers, with simple words and big type.

"But they're actually reading," said Kelly, the veteran teacher. "We're so low on skills, and this is the first time I've ever seen this block of time used for education."

Cruz leaves school around 6 p.m., then spends two hours with her family. At 8 p.m., she's back at it, answering e-mail, tackling paperwork.

Her husband and her children, ages 18, 13, and 3, sacrifice for the school. "At the end of every July, my husband says, 'OK, say bye-bye to Mommy.' "

Cruz acknowledges that she lets paperwork pile up. She's an outside principal, not an office principal.

"I don't want the teachers to think I don't know what's going on," she said. "I don't want the students to think I don't care."

She sometimes bristles at district policies that she said limit some of the changes she can put in place. She gets frustrated with those who stand in her way.

Besides lagging academics, West has landed on Pennsylvania's "persistently dangerous" list for the last several years because of its number of serious incidents that led to arrests: 30 in 2007-08 and 25 the next year.

Despite the improvement, Cruz bristles at the label and laments that the count includes violence that happens outside school but involves students.

"There are parents in this community who are avoiding this school because it's 'persistently dangerous,' " Cruz said. "We're not dangerous."

Numbers from 2008-09.

Students: 939.

Teachers: 80.

Support staff: 20.

Eleventh graders reading at grade level: 12 percent.

Eleventh graders doing math at grade level:

9 percent.

Experience: English teacher, Philadelphia School District; administrator, Freire Charter School.

Education: La Salle and Temple Universities.

Age: 37.

Residence: Lansdowne.

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