At Palolo Elementary, hope endures

By Jennifer Hiller
Advertiser Education Writer

The flat roofs and drab, sand-colored apartments of the housing projects are visible just down slope from Palolo Elementary School.

Palolo Elementary Principal Ruth Silberstein catches up with Palolo parents Raynettee Leopoldo, left, and Lesley Pontes. Leopoldo, holding Nathaniel Narvaes, 2, a friend's child, said all six of her children have gone to the school. Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser

"Education is not the first priority. Survival is the first priority," Silberstein said. "The basic needs are first. That's where the parents are functioning. That's where the students are functioning."

After nearly 40 years in education, Silberstein has returned to live in her childhood home in upper Palolo Valley to try to help the students in her long-struggling neighborhood.

At Palolo Elementary, 98 percent of the students qualify for the federal free and reduced lunch program. Nearly every student is on campus each morning for the free breakfast, too.

Almost 40 percent are learning English as a second language, one of the highest numbers in the state. And 85 percent live in the immigrant-heavy Palolo Valley Homes housing project.

Barefoot children on their way to P.E. class or field trips choose their footwear from a pile of shoes. Many parents work two or three jobs to keep their families afloat.

A few parents are gang members, a fact that has prompted local police officers to warn Silberstein to be careful when she deals with those families.

Undeterred, Silberstein said she uses the same methods to talk to all parents: She never tells them what to do, but suggests that it would help their child if they would read together at night and set aside a quiet time and place for homework each evening. She and the Jarrett Intermediate principal occasionally walk the housing project and attend board meetings there to allow the neighbors to learn their faces.

"We're trying to establish a relationship with the community," she said.

They've gotten nothing but warm receptions so far. Most residents ask Silberstein which child she is looking for, thinking that someone must be in big trouble for the principal to come over.

"I tell them I'm not looking for anybody," she said. "I'm just enjoying walking through the housing."

Hope and optimism

A class of fourth-grade children learn to play the 'ukulele, while down the hall, another group draws portraits of two children sitting so still they seem like statues. Teachers have been astonished this year to see children run to the library at recess.

Silberstein started a variety of academic programs this year to help improve the self-esteem and scholastic success of students.

A volunteer coordinator has brought in Rotarians, who have started working here several times a week as reading tutors. Silberstein said it gives students a chance to bond with people who have been successful in the business world.

The school also invited the Hawai'i Alliance for Arts Education, which sends local artists to classrooms, to help with art projects. This month, students completed a mural with the help of artist Maile Yawata.

When students started bringing their older brothers and sisters to the Read Aloud Program, teachers started a separate program for intermediate students. At RAP sessions, held in the evenings at school, adults and children enjoy read-aloud time and the families receive articles, booklists and other information on helping their kids read better. Since January 1999, more than 30,000 adults and children from Hawai'i's public schools have participated in the national program.

"We do a lot of things together as a family, but it's good to have something extra at the school," said Charlie Graves, father of Kaiulani Graves-Borden, 9, and Kiana, 7. "We enjoy it. I've seen the parents and even the teachers working much more closely with the students."

When other schools balked, Silberstein welcomed a new program for at-risk high school students to the campus this semester. The high schoolers use a few of the classrooms on the edge of the elementary school and have a different set of teachers, but have started tutoring elementary children in reading and math in their spare time.

The school is also in its third year of Success For All, a schoolwide reading curriculum and tutoring program designed at Johns Hopkins University in 1987. Part of the Success for All program includes a 90-minute uninterrupted reading period each morning to concentrate exclusively on improving language skills. The idea is that students become readers early and are caught and tutored if problems develop. More than 1,8000 schools across the country use the program.

Even special-needs students participate in Success for All. In the special-education classroom, Austin Takamura, a 7-year-old student who could barely hold a pencil or read at the beginning of the school year, scrambles to the front of the classroom.

Austin easily reads a book about air and wind to his classmates, then flashes the teacher a wide grin before he sits down again.

"It's total school reform with reading and interaction with the parents," said Joyce Luka, Title I coordinator. "We're trying to push community involvement."

This year, the school's focus is basic: Attend school daily, be on time, do your homework. Silberstein and others say they can see a difference, even though the advances are small.

"Next year we'll work on the test scores," Silberstein said. "This year, we're trying to give our students hope."

A rainbow of students

Teacher Anita Silva and Foketi Lauhingoa, 10, study a drawing by Ikaika Rivera, 9, left, during a fourth-grade art class. The school recently invited the Hawai'i Alliance for Arts Education to help students with art projects. Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser

Still, 76 percent of the third-grade students scored average or above average on the reading portion of the 2000 Stanford Achievement Test, a nationwide school barometer. That puts the third-graders on par with student performance nationwide, but below the statewide average of 82 percent reading at or above average at third grade.

The fifth-graders lag. By fifth grade, the number of students scoring at or above average in reading drops to 47 percent, compared with a state average of 79 percent and a national average of 77 percent.

Silberstein attributes the difference in the test scores to Success for All. The third-graders have had the benefit of the program almost from the beginning of their reading experiences, while the fifth-graders entered the reading program at a much later age. She expects that test scores will rise over the next few years.

Accomplishment is heralded in small breakthroughs. Recently, Joyce Luka, Title I coordinator at the school, celebrated when one of the school's struggling readers became absorbed in a book that was read aloud at breakfast.

He came back at lunch to finish re-reading the book himself.

"He was really excited," Luka said. "He wants to join the after-school reading club."

Silberstein said the school is blessed with commitment.

"The secret of the school is the balance of the mind and the heart," she said. "The teachers are so dedicated. They go beyond the job and it's a tough struggle because of the kinds of students we have. We're so proud of the students because they're trying to give their all. The parents are trying to give their all."

Raynette Leopoldo, who has sent six children to Palolo Elementary, said the positive attitude of the elementary school staff has made an impact on the community.

"We're all struggling, but the school is always so welcoming," she said. "Mrs. Silberstein is always smiling. She always welcomes everyone. She always asks how you're doing."

Silberstein attended Sacred Hearts Academy, but her husband grew up in the Palolo housing projects and the neighborhood has a special place in her heart.

She remembers watching from behind her family's screened front door as Army troops practiced their marches through the neighborhood during World War II. She talks about when the older wooden public housing was torn down and replaced with more modern construction, and how mosquitoes would swarm her and her friends when they played in the valley's rain forest.

After teaching in the Catholic diocese, at Pukalani and Waihe'e Elementary schools on Maui for 21 years, Silberstein said she is glad to have come home. When she returned to O'ahu five years ago, she landed at Pu'ohala in Kane'ohe, but applied to Palolo when the position opened in hopes that she could work in her own neighborhood.

She is optimistic despite the odds. She recently told her teachers about the new requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which will give more money to needy schools such as Palolo Elementary, but ties that money to student performance. Failing schools would get federal help to improve but continued failure would invite sanctions, including replacement of staff, revamping of curriculum or conversion to charter schools.

Considering the constant influx of new immigrants and the expectation that 100 new housing project students will enter the school next year, teachers were dismayed.

"We just do our best," Silberstein said with a smile and a shrug of her shoulders. "Regardless of what happens, what is important is that we did our best."

They hope it is enough.

Reach Jennifer Hiller at jhiller@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8084.