Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 10, 1993 TAG: 9310110040
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BY LAURA WILLIAMSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Pictures of wide-grinned children decorate a hallway display at Hurt Park Elementary School, their shining faces fanned out beneath the title, "Student of the Month."
Principal William Shepherd pointed to the plaque during a recent tour as testament to his efforts to boost the children's self-esteem.
But there's one empty space where a child's proud face should beam. Shepherd could not explain the lapse. Perhaps a teacher forgot to submit a name, he guessed.
"No one's perfect," he shrugged, then moved on.
After all, it's only a missing photograph.
But could that empty square speak to something more than a single, overlooked child?
In a school where good intentions often fall short, where the path between benefactor and child-in-need seems so often cluttered with obstacles, does it point instead to a pattern of missed - or fumbled - opportunities?
Hurt Park, arguably the city's most troubled school, cannot afford to bypass even the smallest gesture of good will.
It is "a needy, needy school," one former employee lamented. "It would just break your heart to see these kids."
Hurt Park's children lack the things most children take for granted. A pair of mittens. Two quarters to go on a field trip, or the most basic of school supplies. Sometimes, even, a safe home.
Many live with patchwork or partial families; some leave for school in the morning from their homes in the adjacent Hurt Park housing project or the surrounding neighborhood without so much as a hug or a kiss goodbye.
By any measure, the Southwest Roanoke neighborhood that sends its children to Hurt Park School is among the city's poorest. Median income is half what it is in the rest of the city. Unemployment runs about double.
The number of Hurt Park children qualifying for free lunches this year - a yardstick used by the federal government to measure poverty and distribute financial aid - topped 85 percent. Of the school's 235 pupils, only 30 can afford to buy their own meals.
Hurt Park's children carry their problems with them through the schoolhouse doors - depositing evidence of their neglect on standardized test forms, absentee slips and failed physical fitness exams.
Their stories inspire aid from all quarters.
Over the years, civic and business leaders have come forward to help. There have been business partnerships, tutoring programs, state and federal aid and parents from other school districts standing by to pitch in.
Yet efforts to form a Parent-Teacher Association - until recently - failed. Others trying to help say they were met with resistance and even hostility. Most recently, the city's new school superintendent felt it necessary to pull Hurt Park from a $70,000 state demonstration grant because he sensed a lack of schoolwide commitment to the project.
What's wrong?
Other schools in Roanoke have managed to propel students toward their potential, defying the erosive effects of poverty.
Hurt Park, in test results and in some eyes, seems swallowed whole by the challenge.
Why have so many forces failed? Why hasn't the school system led the way? The community? The principal?
While it may be logical to blame Shepherd - principals are obvious lightning rods during school troubles - some see a man deeply concerned about the needs of his pupils. They describe a caring, loving principal who cooperates with those seeking his help.
Not everyone agrees. Interviews with 38 people involved with the school paint a conflicting picture of Hurt Park and Shepherd's role there. Eight spoke well of Shepherd. Seven were neutral, or described both positive and negative experiences with him. Nineteen spoke negatively of him and of his management of the school. Three supplied information related to the school or the community that did not reflect upon Shepherd's performance.
School Superintendent E. Wayne Harris, on the job since July 1, has refused to comment for this story. Administrators who spoke on his behalf said they wanted to focus on positive events at the school and on the future. But, they said, they are willing to provide any help or support Shepherd may need, as they would at any other school.
Many in the Hurt Park community say Shepherd has a tyrannical management style that exacerbates and may even cause many of the school's woes. People both inside and outside the school system described an abrasive man who repelled offers of assistance by making benefactors feel unwelcome.
Staff members spoke of a supervisor who weakened school morale, scolded parents and teachers like children, and showed little enthusiasm for the job. None would agree to be identified for fear of getting fired.
Even the staff members who had positive things to say about Shepherd asked that their names not be used. The Roanoke school system, they explained, frowns upon teachers who speak out.
For his part, Shepherd described himself as genuinely if not outwardly enthusiastic, a "no-nonsense" manager who has been misread and misunderstood.
He blamed the negative characterizations on summertime news coverage of charges - subsequently dropped - that he failed to report a case of suspected child abuse at the school.
The coverage left him vulnerable to attacks from disgruntled staffers or others who "could be" racially motivated, he said.
"You're getting into a witch hunt. If somebody is a malcontent, a malfeasant person, then this is a chance for everybody to beat a dead snake. So you get credit for things that you had nothing to do with."
None of Shepherd's critics calls him a bad person - only a miscast one. They hold out hope that Harris will bring changes to the school. Some think he already has.
A matter of style
Former Hurt Park Principal Richard Chubb remembers when parents took an active role at the school, when a strong PTA helped organize out-of-state field trips and other events for the children.
He also remembers how hard he had to work to keep parents involved.
He spoke to church groups and at community centers. He rode the school bus home with pupils and knocked on their parents' doors. He sometimes stayed in his office past 1 a.m. to keep up.
"I was trying to save everybody," he said. "I was going to put a dent in it, you see."
He did. Parents and community members fondly remember Chubb's 16 years at Hurt Park.
But when Superintendent Frank Tota arrived in 1981, Chubb felt a change in attitude from the administration - a change he felt focused too much on politics.
"Tota led by coercion or authority," Chubb said. "If he said `Jump,' you had to jump. Most people that did that survived."
According to Chubb, Shepherd was one of them.
Chubb was not. He told Tota how he felt, then took a year's leave of absence in 1986. When he returned, the PTA had dissolved under a cloud of accusations of embezzlement.
Frustrated, Chubb left the school after another year and took a job as principal on special assignment, a position that allowed him to work at a number of schools doing what he loved most - counseling children.
In the meantime, Hurt Park underwent several changes in management.
Shepherd arrived during the 1989-90 school year, taking a promotion from his job as a dean at William Fleming High School.
Chubb described Shepherd as someone more willing to handle the administrative paperwork than he was, but less immersed in the community. Still, he recalled, Shepherd always had the pupils' best interests at heart and was never afraid to ask for help.
For example, one of Shepherd's early moves was to ask Chubb to return to counsel pupils and their families. Chubb did so until he retired in 1991.
The PTA struggles
Shepherd stepped into a school that had no PTA, at many schools the cornerstone of relations among parents, teachers and administrators.
For years, Hurt Park was the only elementary school in the city without one.
The new principal made re-establishing the organization a priority.
Shepherd and some parents organized a group called the Helping Hands of Hurt Park, which he hoped would evolve into a PTA. It never did.
The following year, Pat Witten, then the president of the PTA Central Council, organized and attended some start-up meetings. Parents appeared eager initially, raising a small amount of money and electing officers.
Witten arranged for PTA members from Crystal Spring Elementary School in South Roanoke to be partners who would help Hurt Park's parents get going.
"I was on cloud nine," Shepherd said, "because I said, `At last, we have a PTA.' And the next thing I know the two people who were co-presidents, for whatever their reasons, didn't follow through."
Parents complained of other obligations and resigned. In a neighborhood where nearly one-third of the residents don't own cars, some had no way to get to the meetings. Others feared walking home late at night. Nobody stepped in to fill the void.
The Rev. Milton Hardy, a parent who had joined the PTA, said the group fell apart because Shepherd failed to take charge.
"Mr. Shepherd is in authority there," he said. "If he don't push it, get behind it like he should, it isn't going to get started. In my opinion, he could have done a lot more."
"I don't recall Reverend Hardy offering any assistance," Shepherd responded.
Witten said she offered hers - only to be rebuffed.
Soon after the PTA got started, she said, she heard that Shepherd called the parents together without her. She went to the meeting anyway, uninvited.
The group stopped to stare at her when she entered the room, she said.
"I know for a fact that I was not wanted," Witten said. "I decided that I was not going to waste any more time until they came to me."
Shepherd denied the meeting had anything to do with a PTA, but could not remember why it was held.
Hardy saw Witten as part of the problem.
She received a poor reception because she arrived with a "know-it-all" attitude that parents resented, he said.
During the years that followed, others tried to generate interest in a PTA. Marsha Ellison, now Central Council president, said she sent a letter to Shepherd last year offering her help. He never responded.
Shepherd resents intimations that the school's lack of a PTA points to his own shortcomings.
"I inherited that," he said. "I did not create it. Every year that I have been there I have been trying."
And, he said, he has finally succeeded.
On the first day of school this fall, Shepherd pleaded with parents to organize a new PTA.
But many credit Mary Hackley - a former Hurt Park teacher and principal who is now director of elementary education for all city schools - with persuading parents to join.
On back-to-school night, Hackley spoke passionately about the need for a voice for the children of Hurt Park, parent Shelia Hairston said.
"She really inspired us to get it going," said Hairston, now the group's co-president. "She's a wonderful speaker."
About 40 parents signed up in favor of the group, many sticking around to establish by-laws and officers with Ellison's help. More than 20 paid their $2.25 annual dues.
But part of the responsibility for keeping the fledgling group up and running will be Shepherd's.
He believes he will succeed this time, he said, because the parents who joined are "more oriented toward taking ownership for being parents and what are some of the responsibilities of being a parent."
The parents
As Shepherd nurtures the new PTA, he'll be facing parents who have wildly different opinions of his style and his service at Hurt Park.
Kim Burnette and her sister, Monica Dudley, think highly of Shepherd, saying he looks out for their children. Burnette said Shepherd even helped find her a job with the school system.
But Cynthia Davis found Shepherd disrespectful and ineffective in handling discipline matters.
Davis said Shepherd frequently called her to his office to discuss problems with one of her sons when he was in kindergarten, a child who "got kicked out of school a lot . . . for destructive behavior."
During discussions Shepherd sometimes held in the hallways or with his office door open, the principal told her, "I didn't put up with this mess with my kids and I won't put up with it with yours," she said.
Sema Kemp, another parent, said she liked Shepherd's approach because it mirrored her own.
Kemp said she got called to the school during Shepherd's first year when one of her children was misbehaving. She arrived with "a switch" and took the child to the restroom to spank him.
Shepherd told her that she would be welcome to use his office for that purpose in the future, should she ever need to return, she said.
That's praise Shepherd could live without. He denies ever allowing a parent to enter the school to punish a child and says he would never do so.
Neither would he hold conferences in hallways or with his door open, he said.
"That is not a practice of mine," he said. "I have more professionalism than that, OK?"
Staff and students
Staff members - former and current - likewise tell vastly different stories of Shepherd's management style. Some say that's because the principal acts the part of a Jekyll and Hyde personality - charming to those he likes, vengeful to those he doesn't.
Teachers who disagreed with Shepherd felt sharp repercussions, his staff said. Some were transferred or demoted. Others claim they opted to leave Hurt Park rather than continue to be targets of Shepherd's verbal abuse.
Shepherd denies that charge - adamantly. In fact, he said, he maintains an "open-door policy" at Hurt Park.
"Anybody can come in at any time. If they have problems, I discuss them with them. There have been people who have come in that have concerns. We have discussed those concerns. We have resolved those concerns, and there was no reprimand or anything or recrimination or anything else."
Not according to Jeanette Hardin.
She worked at Hurt Park for 21 years - and wanted to stay there until she retired. But she and Shepherd crossed swords during his first year, and she found herself transferred to Virginia Heights.
"They moved me at his request," said Hardin, now retired from her career as a guidance counselor.
Shepherd refused to discuss the situation, citing the confidentiality of personnel matters.
Another former staff member, who asked not to be named, said Shepherd harassed and verbally abused her to the point that she developed a nervous condition and required anti-depressants.
"He was the most nonprofessional, callous person I've ever run into in my educational career," she said. "If he didn't like you he would make your life miserable."
Shepherd demanded extra paperwork, embarrassed teachers by scolding them in front of faculty and threatened to fire those he wanted to punish, said the staff member, who left largely because of Shepherd.
"He can be very intimidating," another former staff member said. "His voice gets very loud. He leans forward, puffs up, gets into your space."
Hardin said he treated his the staff "like dirt."
Teachers - current and former - said Shepherd swore when speaking to them, never offered praise unless a representative from the central administration was present, and created an environment of fear and low morale.
"He'd enter faculty meetings with a frown," one former staff member said. "Everything would be negative and a complaint from top to bottom on the agenda."
The criticisms aren't limited to adults, according to the charges.
When a 4-year-old child was chosen to be Student of the Month and walked down to the office to have his picture taken, Shepherd demanded to know what he was doing there, staff members said.
The child, who had a speech problem, had difficulty answering - a situation that staff members said angered Shepherd.
"He just belittled the child and yelled at him. He said, `If you can't even talk, you don't deserve to be Student of the Month,' " a staff member who overheard the conversation said.
Several teachers and parents spoke of an unusual number of suspensions at Hurt Park, accusing Shepherd of tossing kids out rather than tackling their behavior problems.
City administrators wouldn't compare the number of suspensions among elementary schools.
"A lot of times his handling of the situation would be avoidance," one former staff member said. "He just wasn't real good with the kids. Or the adults. Or anybody."
Hardin, whose office backed up to Shepherd's, said he would often tell children in his office to "sit down and shut up and don't talk unless I say something."
Not true, said Shepherd, who also said he never yelled at children.
"I don't holler at kids," he said. "If I need a child, I have that kind of rapport with a child, I don't need to do that.
"I don't get up in people's faces and do that kind of thing," he said.
Offers of help
Shenandoah Life, the Roanoke underwriter, had been making informal donations to city schools for years when, in 1989, the school system invited the company to establish a formal relationship with a school. Employees chose Hurt Park because the need appeared to be the greatest.
Shenandoah Life's public relations director, Donna Musselwhite, said her company found it difficult to set up the volunteer partnership with the school.
"During our first year in the partnership, we sometimes found it difficult to determine what we should be doing at Hurt Park and how we should be working the principal and the teachers," she said. "We seemed to have difficulty setting up events and setting up the tutoring program. Projects seemed to take more energy than they should to get started."
Musselwhite said things improved the second year, when the company switched from working with Shepherd to working with a committee of teachers, who were more in touch with the needs of the pupils.
But she still felt a great deal of frustration by the lack of support "from the superintendent on down," she said, and worried that the school was being neglected.
"If it weren't for the children at Hurt Park, we probably would have walked out of there after six months," she said.
Lissy Runyon, who handles business partnerships for the Roanoke school system, said she was unaware that Shenandoah Life felt neglected as a partner. She knew the company had concerns when the partnership started but thought they had been resolved. Communication, she added, was a two-way street, noting that Musselwhite sometimes missed meetings she held to discuss how the city's business partnerships were progressing.
Shepherd, also, said he was unaware of any problems with Shenandoah Life, but that he would be willing to work them out.
"I'm not an unreasonable person," he said.
Susan Strauss thinks he is.
Two years ago, Shenandoah Life paid the Oregon storyteller to visit the children and teach a workshop at the school. She called Shepherd in advance and asked that he set aside a quiet place for her to work - that he not, for example, place her in a cafeteria if workers would be preparing lunch at that time.
That's exactly what he did. So Strauss moved her program to a classroom area, on the teachers' advice.
"He came in and seemed to be beside himself with anger," she said. "He called me out of the room and all of the teachers rolled their eyes. He really treated me like I was his teen-age daughter. I couldn't take the kids and go without asking his permission."
A two-hour workshop was arranged for Strauss to talk to teachers. She said Shepherd used half the time discussing staff issues such as not taking coffee into the hallways.
"He just went on and on and I had to sit there for an hour listening to this stuff. After a while I just thought this was really bizarre. I felt it was one of the worst workshops I ever gave because I was so nervous and flustered."
Shepherd said he could not remember the incident, but that he always tried to accommodate outsiders if possible.
Suzn Head, president-elect of the Junior League, said Shepherd has been accommodating to her group, which established a tutoring program at the school last year.
Shepherd helped identify pupils who needed help, and also made the school available for adult aerobics classes after-hours, she said.
But she admitted that others warned her to approach Shepherd gently, telling her he could be "gruff." It's a side of Shepherd she never saw, she said, perhaps because she tried to involve Shepherd with the project from the beginning.
One outsider Shepherd would not accommodate was Marsha Aliff, a longtime volunteer at the school. Shepherd did not return phone messages asking to discuss her case.
Aliff worked in the school office, the library and with students for years under several principals at Hurt Park. She stopped her work to handle a personal crisis, then found out she had AIDS.
She returned to the school in 1990 to offer assistance once more, after she lost her job and her disease prevented her from finding another.
Shepherd rejected her help. He sent her a letter, she said, stating that he didn't want her "type" inside his school.
Teachers say Shepherd has belittled the help of others.
They tell stories of how Shepherd made fun of a Michigan consultant hired with a $144,000, two-year state grant awarded to the school last year.
The grant provided training in new teaching methods, a school nurse who would help link families with social service agencies and money for parenting classes.
According to teachers, Shepherd said they didn't have to listen to Cathy Albro, the Michigan woman brought in to train them in the methods of High Scope, which promotes giving children more choices about how to spend classroom time.
The teachers said Albro was treated so poorly she canceled her last training session and asked to be reassigned to another school.
Shepherd called the school reforms "just the latest thing to come down the road" and referred to Albro as "the little blonde woman," a "cult leader" and "the high schooler," they said.
Shepherd said those things were said about the grant and about Albro - but not by him.
"I never made fun of nobody coming in there," he said. "That was somebody else. And I know specifically who."
He would not give the person's name. Instead, Shepherd suggested that several teachers had gotten together to take advantage of him while he was already suffering from bad publicity.
Contacted in Michigan, Albro confirmed that she asked for a transfer but would not discuss her reasons.
Shepherd contends that he always supported the grant, but that he may not have given that impression because he was frustrated by his lack of control over the project.
Administrators at the central office controlled the grant, said Shepherd - not him.
"I was supportive of the grant but probably by not making the decisions as to what would or would not occur within the school somewhat diminished maybe some enthusiasm," Shepherd said.
"I had nothing to do with spending or any of those things. I was just there to give my support to the teachers," he said.
Grant declined
The second part of the state grant, worth an additional $70,000, was to have been used at Hurt Park this year.
But problems lingered from last year's program.
Teachers didn't feel Shepherd supported their efforts. He rarely attended the Thursday night meetings they held to discuss their progress, they said. He showed little interest in what they were doing, and failed to make time to discuss it with them.
He gave a different impression to the Department of Education. Jo Bunce, who headed the demonstration grant project, said Shepherd appeared supportive at state workshops.
"He was always willing to take our recommendations," she said.
One of those recommendations was to consolidate control of the project at the school level, she said.
"It's possible sometimes Mr. Shepherd found himself in a situation where he didn't know what was happening because there were too many people involved," she said. "They weren't the only school where that was a problem."
She said Superintendent Harris told her he wanted to turn responsibility for the grant over to Shepherd, with Mary Hackley, the director of elementary education, overseeing the project. Harris also told her, during a meeting this summer, that he would determine how committed the school was to the grant.
The state was concerned because Hurt Park sent smaller numbers of teachers to the training sessions than other schools involved in the statewide project.
Harris sent Hackley to the school July 23 to ask the teachers if they were willing to fully commit themselves to the project. She explained, she said, that they would have to work longer hours, spend more time at training sessions, and that everyone would have to get involved, even though the grant only covered pre-kindergarten through third-grade pupils.
She told them Harris would abide by whatever choice they made.
The teachers voted - unanimously - to continue the grant for its second year.
But only four of a dozen teachers showed up at an August workshop in Williamsburg.
That week the teachers learned - through the grapevine - that the school had withdrawn. Harris told a reporter that the decision was made because of poor attendance at staff development workshops.
Staff members said Shepherd didn't notify them of the workshop early enough for them to adjust their schedules. Some found out only two weeks in advance. Many had prior commitments.
"We all felt betrayed, like we'd kind of been stabbed in the back," one staff member said. "Like they were protecting the administration and putting it on our shoulders. It was very hurtful to us."
"It very much felt like a slap also because we had worked so hard all year long," another Hurt Park staffer said. "We attended many meetings and many in-services and did a lot on our own time and really worked hard. And then [Harris] comes in and he's only been here a month and then bases his decision on only one meeting."
Shepherd said he told most of the teachers about the Williamsburg workshop as far back as June. Some, however, did learn of it two weeks before they had to leave.
Still, Hackley said, only one of those who went was a regular classroom instructor. The others were support staff.
She emphasized that, although not officially part of the project, Hurt Park teachers will still be allowed to attend training sessions.
"To say . . . that we completely abandoned the grant, that's not true," Hackley said.
Indeed, teachers say they have continued to make changes in their classrooms, and that even those who initially resisted the reforms have become enthusiastic.
A brighter future
Other projects at the school also provide hope. Despite its frustrations, Shenandoah Life continues to offer field trips and dinners for Hurt Park's children, donating between $20,000 and $25,000 in time and money each year.
The Junior League began its second year of tutoring this fall, and will offer a new program providing after-school snacks and helping pupils with homework.
Central Fidelity Bank has extended a $4,700 grant to the school for after-school tutoring.
And the PTA will soon meet again to talk about ways to increase membership.
Shepherd said he plans to continue positive programs the school has developed, such as one that awards perfect attendance with ice cream parties.
"I'm certainly not turning my head and closing my eyes and pretending that some things don't exist," he said.
Others see the change in administration as the greatest sign of hope, noting that changes in Shepherd's attitude coincided with the new superintendent's arrival.
"He's more receptive," one staff member said. "He seems to be a little bit better at what he's doing."
Some even felt all of Shepherd's troubles might benefit him - and the school - in the long run.
"Don't everybody catch on the same, on the same level," Hardy, one of the parents, said. "I feel that Mr. Shepherd is going to be fine after the rap he got last year. Sometimes you need a wake-up call. This could be his wake-up call.
"I hope and pray so."
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