Germantown also began emphasizing positive behavior through daily, 15-minute lessons, teaching students how to be respectful and deal responsibly with peer pressure, putdowns and anger.
The school started to make use of federal funds meant for low-income schools that allowed Germantown to hire nine intervention specialists. The specialists work in classrooms with teachers to identify learning gaps and pour extra attention into academically struggling children. Their presence has brought teacher-student ratios in many classes to an enviable 1-to-10, lower than many private schools, and have become a key draw for families that are giving the school a chance.
"We went into the school, thinking we'll give it a year and see what happens," said Karen Makris, who has a fourth-grader at the school. "We heard a lot of rumors in the community that it's not a good school, but that's not what I saw. The school gets a lot of [federal] money that my child benefits from, through small class sizes, extra help in class, a lot of great after-school programs. We've got a good core group of parents who help out regularly."
Germantown has launched an aggressive drive to welcome more parents and community volunteers, to help with everything from lunchroom monitoring to planting gardens that simultaneously beautify the school and create "living classrooms" that enhance science education.
School staff say they're seeing signs of a rejuvenation. Families are more eager to spend time at the school, with children lingering on the playgrounds even after the final bell rings.
Germantown's staff members are waiting for signs of improvement to emerge in numbers. They are watching for state data this summer to see how their efforts have affected enrollment and the demographic makeup of their school. With state tests this week, they're also eager to see whether they've sustained steady gains in student performance. The school's reading performance among third-graders, once its weakest area, now boasts a 77 percent pass rate.
"This school is a very different place than what it was when I started here 12 years ago," said guidance counselor Angie Guns. "This used to be a very stressful environment for teachers and students. Teachers were frustrated because of the loss of learning time with behavior problems, and children were frustrated because they couldn't learn, weren't getting certain concepts. That's when we saw a lot of families leaving us."
Guns said principals as far back as a decade ago began instituting new behavior programs and intensified the focus on academics that began turning the school around, but it was a change only those inside the school were noticing. Meanwhile, neighborhoods with professional families and higher achieving children kept sending their children to nearby private schools, she said.
"Unfortunately, we saw it was a lot easier to earn a bad reputation than get rid of one," Guns said.
But the momentum seems to be on the school's side this year, Guns and her colleagues say.
"There just seems to be a groundswell of enthusiasm about the school this year. This feels like a real neighborhood school," Reap said.
ruma.kumar@baltsun.com
