Northwest principal sets high expectations

MCPS honors Morrison with excellence and harmony award

Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Naomi Brookner⁄The Gazette Northwest High School Principal Sylvia K. Morrison talks with Marckus Ruffin, a senior, as they walk through the halls on Monday. Morrison was awarded the Mark Mann Excellence and Harmony Award earlier this month by Montgomery County Public Schools for her skill in balance academic performance, community outreach and relationship building at the Germantown school. The award is presented to one MCPS administrator each year.

A counselor in her office discusses academic intervention programs for Northwest High School students. On the phone, Morrison encourages a senior, having a particularly rough day, to open up.

‘‘If he can settle himself down, he can come speak to me right now,” Morrison says into the receiver, talking now to a staff member.

He arrives and they talk about what happened. ‘‘I was thinking of dropping out again,” he says into his chest.

‘‘That’s not the solution,” Morrison calmly tells him. ‘‘You’re in 12th grade. You’re almost at the finish line. I can see it, can you?” asks the principal who received the county school system’s Mark Mann Excellence and Harmony Award earlier this month.

It’s 10:30 a.m., not even close to the halfway point of her 15-hour workday, and Morrison is in her element.

Her ability to balance academic rigor, community outreach and build relationships is what earned her the award, given annually to one school administrator.

Before the student leaves, they talk about extra tutoring and strategies to encourage his success. She asks about his grandmother and suggests a visit with her might improve his spirits.

MCPS tapped Morrison, who grew up in New Orleans and is teased occasionally by students for her subtle accent, to lead the school in 2002, four years after it opened.

Since then, the school’s population has increased by one-third, to 2,025 students. The graduation rate has increased while the dropout rate has decreased.

More students are taking the SAT and enrolling in honors and advanced placement classes. The number of African-American students enrolled in at least one honors or AP class grew by 22 percent.

‘‘She believes in having high expectations for all of her students,” said Henry Pittman, president of the school’s NAACP Parent Council. ‘‘It’s one of the things she’s focusing on, and she’s asked teachers, administrators and counselors to also have higher expectations of the students.”

Students say Morrison’s inspirational words are, for the most part, encouraging.

‘‘She cares about all the kids. She wants us to succeed,” said junior Vlad Raina of Germantown.

This school year, Morrison introduced a silent reading program at the Germantown school, to encourage reading for pleasure. And Northwest was the county’s first high school to initiate a plan to identify incoming freshmen with academic difficulties to provide more intense support.

‘‘As a school, we won’t be satisfied until all students have at least a 2.0 GPA,” Morrison said Monday. ‘‘Understanding all the issues that students bring to school is an issue that we’ll continue to struggle with.”

Today, when some students face extra pressure to compete for scholarships, while others work or care for siblings to help their families, it’s no easy task.

‘‘One of the unique things about Northwest is when you look at the populations of where the kids come from,” Pittman said. ‘‘Some are coming from the poor sections of Germantown that have higher crime rates. But then you have the kids coming from the more affluent areas near Kingsview and Boyds and Darnestown. The challenge that is at school is being able to mesh all those things together and still have academic success.”

Addressing scholastic pressure, self-esteem or social and emotional issues is a team process, Morrison said.

There are occasional disruptions. In April, two groups of female students fought during lunch over an Internet rumor posted on MySpace.com and distributed at school. Fights, while not everyday, do happen.

Morrison pays keen attention to the school’s mood.

‘‘I like to see the climate of the building,” she said, noting that students were fairly subdued Monday, the week before the end of the marking period.

Officer Stephen Galloza, the school’s educational facilities officer, said Morrison tries to anticipate issues before they happen so they can be resolved without incident. Galloza, the EFO for the past year, said there have been fewer fights and incidents this year.

One example, he said, is an incident involving two female students who fought off school grounds. Galloza learned about it through the police officers handling the case and he told Morrison before the girls came to school.

‘‘She didn’t wait. As a principal with 2,000-plus students she has a million things to do, but she stopped immediately and that was her first priority,” he said Tuesday.

Morrison said she tries to balance her role as a disciplinarian with a more welcoming role with students.

‘‘Definitely, I want structure and I want order. Students need to understand that school is like a business. We are here to encourage them,” she said.

Morrison –– who lives in Silver Spring –– calls on parents to get and stay involved. She invites parents to meetings on student quarterly reports so they can understand how the school, as a whole, is performing. She regularly attends parent organization meetings.

‘‘The biggest change that I’ve seen, just in the short period of time I’ve been there, is she has made an effort to see that the parent organizations are working with each other,” Pittman said.

PTSA president Felicia Palmer agrees.

‘‘I think she is a dynamic principal who is willing and wanting to effect change to improve the academic and extracurricular programs at Northwest High School,” Palmer said Monday.

Even navigating the lunch period at Northwest –– where the 2,025 students chow during the same 45-minute period –– is no easy task, but Morrison cruises through. She stops and chats with football players, then steps outside to watch a group of Latino students play soccer.

Back inside, she drags a garbage barrel into place for students to toss their trays into and checks in with a security officer who is monitoring lunch.

She walks the first floor of the building –– students can munch just about anywhere on the first floor –– and stops in an art room where the chess team is gathered.

Back in the hall she steps over students sitting on the floor, reading, chatting and giggling.

‘‘What happened here?” she asks, pointing to a splotch of ketchup on the floor and reminding them to clean up after themselves.

She steps over it, and rounds toward the gymnasium where trophies and photos of the school’s athletic teams are behind glass.

‘‘A large group of our students think of this as a new school and want to establish traditions,” Morrison said as the lunch period drew to a close. ‘‘They want to build a reputation that this school is a powerhouse. They want to establish this as a place where things happen. And it is.”

Back in her office after lunch, the student she talked with earlier is back with a security officer.

He’s not happy.

‘‘Ok, ok, let’s come in and talk about it,” Morrison tells them, shutting the door to help the student see –– a little more clearly –– just how close that finish line is.