A Charter Against Bureaucracy

It is late on a Monday afternoon and Frederick A. Birkett, head of the Benjamin Banneker School in North Cambridge, is walking through the school parking lot saying goodbye to a teacher.

After he bids the teacher farewell, he calls over to sixth-grader Genevah G. J. Alphonse Dalina, who is watching a low-key pick-up basketball game.

Lost in the game, she doesn't respond. So Birkett playfully remarks that he is not talking to the fence.

It might be a typical scene from a typical school, but Birkett--dressed in a black-checked bow tie and coordinating jacket--oversees Cambridge's only charter school.

Which changes the interpretation of the scene.

Consider:

Dalina attends the school because she was selected in a lottery. The school.is 97 percent minority, by far the highest in Cambridge. The teacher Birkett was talking to has no tenure--like all Banneker teachers, he's on a one-year contract. Dalina was still wearing her school uniform. The basketball players--shooting hoops nearly two hours after school let out--were a student and a teacher playing one-on-one.

And Birkett? He's not a principal, but an executive director.

Three-and-a-half years after Banneker opened amid criticisms that it was taking away district money and setting a negative precedent as a minority enclave, it has escaped the media spotlight.

Quietly, the school--which focuses on math and science--has created what teachers and students call the "Banneker community."

Debate at the State House is brewing over how many charter schools Massachusetts should have--currently, there are 34. For its advocates, Banneker--and other charter schools--exemplifies how schools can escape bureaucracy and foster solutions to students' specific needs.

Big Man on Campus

Birkett describes his post as similar to a paramedic's: He doesn't think of students, he thinks of lives.

And while any head of a school values their students, Birkett puts in the time to prove it. He works 70 hours a week, arriving at 7 each morning and leaving after everyone is gone.

Even the school security guard, Glenn S. Harris, says Birkett works like a man possessed.

Because of the structure of the charter school, Birkett has reason to put in long hours. He hires and fires teachers directly, manages a $3.8 million budget and holds weekly full- staff meetings. He communicates with the Board of Trustees, the school's governing overseers.

And Birkett is responsible for ensuring the school's five-year contract gets renewed in late fall 2000.

The challenges are many, but they seem to invigorate Birkett.

He smacks his fist into his palm as he addresses the challenges. "We can focus right in on a problem," he says, "and then we can deal with it."

He says he feels uniquely qualified to run such an ambitious mission. He has taught, he has administrated, he has been in academia and he has flown in the Air Force.

When he was a high school social studies teacher, he found that he wanted to have more of an influence--and that he could do an administrator's job.

So Birkett headed toward Harvard's Graduate School of Education, where he received his master's in 1995. Though his initial job as Assistant Head Master at Boston's Renaissance School "literally fell into my lap," as he says, he beat out 35 other applicants to become Banneker's executive director in the June of 1997.

The School of Hard Knocks

For Birkett, the most important aspect of the school is the students.

The next most important aspect is the teachers.

But the extent of his power as Executive Director makes some teachers' unions scream in protest.

Teachers are signed to one-year contracts that need to be renewed annually. They are required to arrive at school at 7:30, half an hour before school starts, and stay until 3:30, half an hour after school ends. They attend at least one full faculty meeting per week. They must contact with their students' parents on a weekly basis.

"I would not be able to do half the things I do if I were in a public school," Birkett says.

Birkett requires a lot of his 30 teachers, but he says he also puts a lot into selecting them, trying to select candidates who are experienced in an urban setting and excel at classroom management.

"I really look for people who can be friends to the students. That's something you can't train to do," he says.

"We have more resumes than you can shake a stick at," he adds.

For every opening, Birkett typically receives around eight applications. He even has brought in an outside consultant to help him discern between candidates.

The effort pays off, he says. "I only pick from the cream...no milk for me," he smiles.

Though teachers' unions may not be in favor of the balance of power, the teachers at Banneker say it works smoothly.

"Because we don't have unions, the expectation here is that you work until the job gets done," says Kathleen Horrocks, director of support services.

Banneker's 30 teachers present a balanced racial mix, with half minority and half non-minority. They come from different educational backgrounds, but all beat out heavy competition to join the charter school movement.

Horrocks, who originally was an elementary school special education teacher in Houston, says she believes there are very hard-working and intelligent public school teachers, but maintains that the level of teachers at Banneker is exceptionally high.

"I never knew a teacher at an unionized school who came in on Saturdays," she says.

Horrocks was one of the original teachers when the school opened in the fall of 1996. She vividly recalls sitting with other teachers early in the morning of the first day of school trying to put together desks. Although it was a valiant effort, the first day of school started with students coming into rooms with carpets--and little else. The first year was rocky. Two teachers left abruptly because they felt they had not received adequate support and the original executive director left after conflicts with the board.

Over three years later, the classrooms have carpets, desks and crayons. There are three PowerMacs, and the Banneker community has stabilized--though the structure remains flexible.

For example, although teachers generally stay with a class for two years, their contracts are reconsidered yearly--and some do not return.

For Birkett and Horrocks, the teachers whose contracts are not renewed are usually not a good match for the school.

"This is not just a gift. It's more typical of jobs inside the realm of business," Horrocks concludes.

Racial Matters

The Banneker school, for all its institutional differences, is also different on the surface from neighboring schools simply because of its racial makeup.

Its minority population of 97 percent, compared to 45 percent for the Cambridge school with the second-highest percentage of minorities.

Its name pays homage to the black mathematician and surveyor who helped design Washington, D.C. in 1790. The founding group of parents and educators grew out of the DuBois Institute, a Saturday program that tried to give black children a chance for academic and personal enrichment.

Part of the initial opposition to the school was based on the idea that it was some kind of ethnic enclave.

But Birkett says the predominantly black environment adds to the comfort level of students and lets them excel.

"Minority students were not receiving adequate academic support," he says.

The challenge of getting a state charter was a big one.

To gain the charter, the founding group had to prove the school would offer something the Cambridge public schools did not--so they went with a math and science focus.

"If a district can say, 'We are already doing that,' then you have to find some niche that is not being filled," Birkett says.

The reason for the high burden of proof is that the state gives the school $3.8 million a year--no strings attached. And while there are no district funds to dip into for facilities or special education budget, there is also no regulating, Board-of-Education-like bureacracy that approves budget items.

For Carlo J. Abrams, the human resources consultant, the most exciting thing about charter schools--and the Banneker--is that the traditional bureacracy is bypassed.

"There is no such animal [like bureacracy] with charter schools," he says.

Up to the Test?

Yet, for all its differences and innovative approaches, the proof is still in the pudding.

For Massachusetts' schools right now, that proof is test scores.

The school is too young for test scores to mean much. Currently, the school only has MCAS results from 30 fourth graders.

"My goal is to get right out there in front. How do you affect students? How do you make them read better?

Part of my goal is to be at the fore-front of not just charter schools, but schools," Birkett says.

In the Iowa Reading Test, which third-graders take, the school's results indicated it was meeting its goals.

"Based on this year's Iowa Reading Test Scores, the Benjamin Banneker Charter School has finally completed what it set out to do three years ago...to meet the educational needs of minority, low-income, and disadvantaged students in Cambridge," reads the school annual report.

The End of the Beginning

And for the members of the Banneker family, a rocky start has settled to a comfortable and stable educational environment.

"People have accepted us as another school in Cambridge," Birkett says.

He is not the only one who remains optimistic about the school.

"You had to work out the bumps [in the beginning]. This year, I'm proud of this school," says Sharon Reed, one of the founding parents.

And pride is something that seems to identify this school, as the mantra of sacrifice for the greater good runs through the hallways.

"The school is here for the children and not for the adults. If you place your personal needs first, this is not the place to be," Horrocks says.

Birkett says he is building a "dream team" for a "dream school."

While it is not a matter of life or death, he--the paramedic figure--sees it as such.

"We're dealing with lives. We can't waste a minute," he says. "I have no time for people who don't go along with the program. We have to teach children here."

Thus, the teachers and administrators see this as less of a job and more of a family endeavor.

"This is the Banneker family--you do what you have to do for your family," Horrocks concludes.