Not Gunmen, but Smarties

By Barbara Dolan/Detroit

The scene at Detroit's sprawling, gritty Redford High School seemed like a % real-life replay of Blackboard Jungle. Throngs of students, some armed with knives, roamed the graffiti-covered halls, smoking marijuana, playing touch football and frequently fighting. Only about half the mostly black student body of 2,800 showed up for classes on any given day. The school's administrators had lost control. No wonder a monitoring commission set up by a federal court described Redford as the worst high school in Detroit.

That was before Joe Greene arrived three years ago to take over as principal. Greene, a soft-spoken Mississippian with 18 years in the Detroit school system, four of them as principal of another problem high school, had a nickname -- "Mean Joe Greene," after the Hall of Fame pro-football star. He showed right away that he was prepared to live up to it. Among the stiff rules he began enforcing: three unexcused absences would mean suspension, each subsequent truancy would mean another suspension, and after three suspensions, a student would be transferred out of Redford. "I've heard a lot about Redford, basically all bad," he told the students. "We're going to try to change all that, with your help. Now I know some of you won't do that. The rules are for you."

Two weeks later Greene and his staff made a surprise sweep of the corridors, rounding up 400 students who were loitering after classes had begun. All of them were suspended and sent home with letters requesting that their parents meet with Greene before the students could be allowed to return. In his first semester, Greene handed out 2,000 suspensions and ordered 100 transfers. Students got the message. By the end of Greene's first year, classroom attendance had risen from 56% to 85%. With a measure of order and calm restored, Greene went to work on academics. In 1985 he canceled Redford's football season because 17 of the school's 26 players had failed to maintain a 2.0 grade average. He began a program of accelerated classes for students who wanted them, holding periodic honors assemblies to recognize their achievements, with parents invited.

Today many students who left Redford for parochial or other schools have transferred back, swelling enrollment to 3,450. The school's once moribund parent organization has grown from ten members in 1984 to about 50. Greene, says English Teacher Janet Bobby, "built a structure around the school so everybody could be free." Although students have complained incessantly about Greene's disciplinarian ways, and in February tried unsuccessfully to stage a protest, many take pride in the school's new image. Says Junior Natalie Bien- Ami, 16: "We're not gunmen, we're smarties."

Despite Greene's growing reputation throughout the Detroit system, city school officials have not entirely approved of his approach. Ousters for absences or rowdiness, they argue, are too severe a punishment for students who may have deeper social and psychological difficulties. "They bring their troubles to school," says Junious Williams, director of the Detroit public schools' office of student code of conduct. "When you suspend a kid for not attending, it really doesn't resolve the problem." In 1984, in effect rebuffing Greene and other principals who were employing similar tactics, the school board in its redrafted student code removed truancy from the list of violations and began ordering transferred students to be returned to their original schools. Greene remains opposed to such returns.

Furthermore, the board now requires Greene to run his school under restricted rules. For example, Redford students can be sent home for three to five days for loitering in the halls, but they may no longer be transferred for repeated offenses. Students who are violent or commit crimes can be suspended for a semester only if Greene has shown that he has used all his support and counseling services. Greene argues that leaving such students in the schools forces principals to create a prisonlike environment in order to protect the other students. "When you say to an educator, 'You're going to have to teach those children who are constantly disruptive,' " he says, "my question is, 'At what cost?' " A better solution, Greene believes, would be alternative schools for unruly students.

Although he has made striking progress at Redford, change is clearly not coming fast enough for Mean Joe Greene. "School has got to be a better place than the streets," he insists. "For some young people, it may be the only place where they have some sense of structure in their lives. If we don't provide it, who will?"