Pursue your passions

“Stakeholders meeting” is one of those buttoned-up education-world terms describing a room full of passionate, noisy, possibly pissed-off parents, teachers and administrators. It was at one of these meetings 10 years ago in Sacramento when Allen Young decided to open his mouth and speak.

“I talked about how when I went into this one classroom at school,” he remembers, “in the middle of the floor, there was literally a hole in the ground. And there was grass growing out of it.” He told the crowd at the meeting that the school had polished the floor “to the nth degree,” yet never bothered to fix the hole. “I said that was symbolic of the school. We needed to fix the hole in the floor, not just polish.

“We needed to overhaul Sac High.”

His heartfelt plea caught the attention of Kevin Johnson, who also harbored a vision for the school. By March 2003, the city district had approved Johnson’s St. Hope Sacramento Charter High School. Young was the inaugural principal.

“Little did I know,” Young says, years later, “that the school would disintegrate around me.”

He quit Sac High after two years, frustrated and without the safety net of another job. It was a tough time for the married father of four daughters. He jumped from gig to gig looking for another principal post in Sacramento.

And then Young met The Met.

Founded in 2003 as a public charter high school, many, including Sacramento City Unified School District Superintendent Jonathan Raymond, praise The Met as a small but important feather in the district’s cap. Young, who colleagues refer to as a “different breed of principal,” has captained the school going on six years.

Plus, The Met has clout. President Barack Obama recently name-checked it as the type of school that can fix America’s education crisis and give kids “individual attention, while also preparing them through real-world, hands-on training.” Bill and Melinda Gates also are fans, having donated millions to The Met’s parent program, East Coast-based Big Picture Learning.

So then what’s the problem? Why are “Save the Met” fliers posted all over the school’s hallways?

Gold stars, pink slips

It’s early Wednesday morning at The Met, which is housed in a ramshackle 1940s building across from downtown’s Southside Park. Out front, Young—wearing khakis and an untucked John Belushi “College” T-shirt, the one from Animal House—greets students as they arrive on foot, by parental carpool and by Regional Transit bus.

“How long have you had that nose ring?” Young asks one girl.

No response.

“Are you in a gang?” he tries again.

“Yeah,” she shoots back, lively.

“Good,” he deadpans.

Another kid gnaws on a plain bagel, his shoulder-length dreadlocks bobbing like willow-tree branches. He’s also barefoot, looking like Caine in Kung Fu.

Young shakes his head, says “shoes,” and points at the kid’s grimy toes. The teen waffles but quickly is on a cellphone calling someone for sneakers.

At 8:30 a.m., a bell sounds. “Let’s go, boys and girls!” Young shouts down the halls, which empty as teenagers pile into classrooms.

Inside Young’s office, another student’s seated behind a wooden desk that’s comically way too big for his teenaged frame.

“This is Noah, the vice principal,” Young jokes. The student taps away on an iMac, unbothered. “He’s also the school’s IT tech.” Another one-liner.

You instantly realize The Met is unlike most other high schools. One of five dozen Big Picture Learning institutions in the country, it emphasizes education through life experience and engaging the local community in a child’s instruction. Met students partake in internships all over Sacramento, such as at the UC Davis MIND Institute, City Hall and the neighborhood sandwich shop. Teachers, who are actually called “advisors,” lecture multiple subjects and remain with their kids from freshman to senior year.

Young’s only directive when he became principal was “grow or die.” And grow he did: After starting with about just 60 or so kids, the Met now boasts more than 300—and a healthy wait list.

That’s not a lot of kids compared to the district’s 50,000 pupils, but, even so, the U.S. Green Building Council took notice and selected The Met as one of two schools in the entire nation to undergo multimillion-dollar “green” face-lifts, which will soon make Young’s school the first LEED-certified high school in the city.

Met students run the gamut, from UC and CSU hopefuls to single moms and disenchanted near-dropouts who almost slipped through the cracks at normal high schools but now attend classes at Sacramento City College. Nearly all Met kids graduate with college credits in their pockets. This year, two Met kids will leave with associate degrees already.

Superintendent Raymond gets the school’s value. “One size doesn’t fit all,” he admits. “It’s about finding things that really get kids excited about learning, and that doesn’t necessarily speak to the traditional way kids have been educated in large, comprehensive high schools.”

His backing, however, doesn’t guarantee The Met’s survival.

“We’re at a precipice,” Young explains, “where two-thirds of our school [staff] could be forced out.” In March, as had occurred in the past two years, seven of Young’s 13 advisors received pink slips. If they are replaced, Young argues, it will ruin The Met.

“Think about a successful baseball team,” he says, “but changing out two-thirds of the players just like that.”

And so this week, Young and The Met’s baker’s dozen advisors are threatening to leave the district and file to become an independent charter. The deadline is May 30. By doing this they could lose what’s left of their marginal funding. Advisors might also forfeit their seniority—and possibly thousands of dollars in pay. Yet they’re on board with the decision, if necessary.

They’re not into polishing floors. They’re about fixing holes.

And in Young they trust.

“I don’t want to go independent, like Sac High,” the principal explains, “but if that means that I save my teachers and my program, then that’s what I have to do. I’m smart enough to know and I’ve been around long enough to know that it could crumble.

“I’m hoping it doesn’t. I don’t want it to. And I will fight for it.”

‘Go to the principal’s office’

Beatles figurines, Star Wars bobbleheads, Miles Davis pictures, a model Star Trek Enterprise, college-acceptance letters, “War Is Over” postcards, books galore, Led Zeppelin stickers, plastic wrestling action figures. Photos with C-Webb, K.J., Arnold. Or coaching soccer or with his daughters. And Shepard Fairey artwork of Joe Strummer, Bob Marley, Noam Chomsky. Even a Fairey knockoff that proclaims “Obey Mr. Young.”

And another decreeing the sacrosanct:

“Obey the Met.”

Young’s principal’s office sucks you in. The small, somewhat oval room has two doors, and he almost always leaves one open. An iPad, issues of Mother Jones, Mojo and Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor rest on his desk. The White Stripes—“So this is me trying to be hip,” Young says—buzzes on the stereo. Morning sun blasts through east-facing windows, filling the room with soft light. Look closely and you can see speckles of gold and silver hair-dye pigment in his short, graying hair. He also has tattoos on his arm, including one that celebrates his American Indian heritage.

“I have a door in my office always open, and it’s symbolic of my access,” he says.

And, yes, he doesn’t look the principal part. Young sports the same wristwatch every day, but has a penchant for clever T-shirts; today is a green-and-gold Nike with “student” emblazoned across the chest.

At The Met, “there’s not the need for an old-school principal,” Young says. “They know who’s boss. Who’s adult. And there are times I have to go into that mode.

“But you don’t need a suit and tie to mean business.”

Son of a local teacher mom and a commercial-artist dad, Young concedes that he was a less-than-stellar student himself when he attended Sac High. “I had a great time in school” as a Visual and Performing Arts Charter program student, “but I didn’t learn anything, is the short answer.”

In fact, he may not have graduated had it been 2011.

“I was deficient in math, foreign language and English. The way that the state and the district work now [with No Child Left Behind], you can’t do what I did anymore. Now, you can’t be deficient in anything and graduate.”

Learning finally clicked with Young as an undergrad at Humboldt State. Years later, he began his 16-year career in education in Napa, teaching at a high school, when he first started to wonder where kids disappeared to after they graduated.

“Where’d they go?”

Former Sac High principal Judy Billingsley hired Young as a teacher before he succeeded her at Mayor Johnson’s St. Hope charter. “I stand behind the product I was part of for those two years,” he says of his time as Sac High principal, when school attendance hovered around 1,500—it’s now a click over 800. He even had the pleasure of signing his own daughter’s diploma.

“But the idea changed,” Young says of St. Hope. “I thought, ‘I can do this for the two years,’ but when things really started to change, I knew it was time to leave. It was turning into something that I did not sign up for. … Some of it was refreshing. And some of it was maddening.

“If I had true autonomy over Sac High, I would have turned it into the school that The Met is right now.”

It seems every school principal has a nickname—and it’s not always flattering. But Met students don’t have one for Young; they simply call him “Allen.” Ask what kids think of him and you’ll get the same response sophomore Linda Walker gave:

“Allen? Allen’s the best principal in the world.”

“What Allen’s able to do in ways that I can’t fully fathom or understand,” says Met advisor Andrew Frishman, “is make this instant, deep, personal connection with people in ways that shows he wants the best for folks.” Frishman, who is responsible for coordinating Met student internships, actually taught at the first Big Picture Learning school on the East Coast. He’ll be returning there in August, too, but this time to begin his doctorate at Harvard University, in education leadership, one of 25 students accepted into the prestigious program this year.

“He creates this warm, sort of can-do positive environment that doesn’t exist in most schools,” Frishman says of his boss. “He’s able to empower people to take on initiatives and really run with them.”

“I think I’ve been successful at using humor to alleviate sticky situations,” Young himself downplays. “And I just bring that to school. Thankfully, no riots have broken out at The Met. But I have had to break up occasional fights and bust people for drugs. But that’s not my gear. My go-to gear is to talk like we’re talking now, speak to people with respect and hopefully some dignity, and that’s how I get things done.

“Still, we don’t give kids enough credit for what they can accomplish on their own.”

Trillion-dollar question

“Get off Facebook.”

Young taps a student on the shoulder and whispers. Met students work on innovative education website called Schoology, whose look and function is intentionally analogous to that of the popular social-media website. So kids try to sneak in a little Facebook time on the school’s new MacBooks, 100 of which Young recently secured via a grant, in addition to schoolwide Wi-Fi. They also do most of their work on Google Docs.

“So the old ‘I lost my homework’ thing is null and void,” Young smiles.

Met students’ real work, however, takes place outside of school on Tuesdays and Thursdays during their internships. BloodSource, UC Davis, Tarts and Truffles Bakery, the Republican Party of Placer County, Planned Parenthood, the California Air Resources Board, Councilman Kevin McCarty’s office, Effie Yeaw Nature Center, The Waterboy Restaurant, the California state Assembly, Capital Public Radio—at least 90 percent of Met kids are out there working in the community.

“But we’re not ‘anti-book,’” Young reminds. If a kid is interning in an auto shop, for instance, they’ll likely also enroll in a physics or engineering class at Sacramento City College. Met students also take Academic Performance Index and other No Child Left Behind tests. And their college transcripts look exactly like those from any other high school.

Junior student Tyler Short transferred to The Met from McClatchy High School, where he was a year behind in school. “I told my mom that she either has to put me in home schooling or [The Met],” he explains, “or I drop out.” He concedes that he’d grown “really rebellious” and would do “dumb” things, like bet his teachers that he could finish a test first, but then just guess all C’s and turn it in.

At The Met, he’s turned it around, first by interning at a record store in Old Sac for a year and later by shadowing educators at William Land Elementary School. Short says he’s thinking about going into education.

Sophomore Mikayla Taylor recently interned on a documentary film shoot for California Voices, about reproductive health, which she helped edit on her MacBook Pro. She enjoyed the project, but now says she wants to be a “behavioral economist”—a big jump from her first internship at Dad’s Sandwich Shop on S Street, prepping vegetables and sweeping floors.

She, as with many kids, embraces Young’s open-door policy and often can be found in the principal’s office—even if he isn’t. “It’s kind of cool, because I can come in here and talk,” she says. “You can always call on him.”

Another student, Salina Butler, who transferred in February, has a 3-month-old daughter, Nalani. If it wasn’t for The Met, she might not even be in school.

The ethos is straightforward, really. The first thing you see upon entering The Met is a banner that declares, “Pursue your passions.”

On a recent Friday during lunch, Met kids put on a multicultural food festival, vending Mexican pastries and Asian teas for pocket change in the halls. Outside, four-on-four basketball on a busted-up court comes to a halt when one kid slips and cuts up his hand. He pulls gravel from his palm, washes up and keeps hustling.

This time next year, pickup games will be inside a new state-of-the-art multipurpose gym: The Met’s U.S. Green Building Council makeover finally began this past week—the $7 million bond was secured in 2006—and should be concluded by the year’s end. The school’s 300 kids will have to move to Sac High’s campus in the interim. “But our Christmas present,” Young says, “will be an awesome new facility.”

That is, if The Met doesn’t get left behind.

The school’s only eight years old, but has fought its share of battles. “We’ve been on the chopping block several times,” one teacher says.

The California Teachers Association is hot and cold on The Met. In the past, its members have argued that the school sucks resources from the district and that teachers are overchallenged. Young calls it a “misconception” that Met advisors are working beyond their capabilities.

Sacramento City Teachers Association president Linda Tuttle intends to meet with Young and Met advisors soon. “Why mess with a good thing?” she says of The Met’s status as a public charter. She notes that concerns about teachers “overextending” are not just exclusive to The Met. “We know the enthusiasm they’re driven by. We know the passion,” she explains. “But there’s a burnout factor there eventually, and we want people to pace themselves.”

Senior Met advisor Phillip Rosoff says he would never go back to traditional schools. “This is real education,” he argues, “where you actually work with the kids and learn things, and you see them change.”

This transformation is crucial. On Big Picture Learning’s website, there’s a live ticker that reads: “In the U.S., one student drops out of school every 12 seconds.” The tally for this school year rapidly approaches 2 million.

“Cuts are horrific, the dropout rate is horrendous, so how to we change all that with very little money?” asks Principal Young.

Even more than the national debt, it’s America’s big trillion-dollar question.

The big picture

Young stands with fists on hips out front of The Met, awaiting the final bell’s pulse and subsequent student exodus. He jokes that, in addition to being principal, he’s also hall monitor—a task that apparently includes both ensuring kids’ safety and attendance, and doling out wit and disarming banter.

Bzzz. Kids detonate on cue. A noodle-thin, long-haired teen in a charcoal Members Only jacket walks up to Young offering a high-five. The principal reaches out to slap skin—but the kid pulls away. Gotcha.

“Oh, that,” Young laughs, then rebounds. “By the way, the ’80s called, they want their jacket back.”

A parent approaches Young and asks whether Gov. Jerry Brown’s revised budget forecast will save The Met and its teachers. He tells the mom he’s “cautiously optimistic.” But he knows that the same routine—budget-cut threats in January, pink slips in March, fighting for his teachers and The Met’s very existence over the summer—could very well happen all over again next year.

“That’s been how I’ve spent my summer vacation the past three years,” he says of the drill. “But I don’t know how much longer I can do that. I love working hard.

“But I don’t like working stupid.”

Superintendent Raymond says he’s going to work with Young to keep all The Met’s advisors and faculty. He doesn’t want to see them leave the district. “I don’t think it has to get there,” Raymond explained. “I think we have to respect that this is a dependent charter, there’s certain things that they need, and we’ve got to push, we’ve got to work hard to support his needs.”

Still, on a recent Wednesday night over at the “faculty annex,” Young’s coy term for Midtown’s Rubicon Brewing Company, he and teachers debate their options. Should The Met propose a set of demands, “non-negotiables” as one teacher puts it, so that the school’s very existence cannot be compromised by what now appear to be customary, annual pink slips?

As it stands now, the CTA calls the shots. “I respectfully say something has to give,” Young sums up.

He’s serious.

Consider—over drinks at the annex earlier in the week, Young drops this surprise: Avatar filmmaker James Cameron’s wife Suzy Cameron, in the wake of her visit to The Met this past spring, made an attempt to lure Young to her Muse Elementary, a Big Picture-type school in the Santa Monica Mountains. It was a sweet job offer—her school boasts ample funding, first-rate pay and no hiccups with districts or the CTA. Just a chance to give kids a chance to learn, experience. See the big picture. With no holes in the floor.

Yet he turned down the gig.

“The work that I’m doing here,” he says, “isn’t done. Fixing the hole isn’t completely finished. But if we continue having different kinds of schools for different kinds of students, then we’ll get there.”