Walking the Hallways In Some Big Shoes

By Richard Stengel/New York

I know the secret to being a New York City elementary school principal. It's just four words: "Where do you belong?" The question is uttered in a tone at once stern and fond to any child, however small and winsome, found wandering the halls of school between periods.

I discovered this on a recent Thursday when I was officially principal of P.S. 154, on West 127th Street in Harlem. I learned it from Elizabeth Jarrett, 41, the school's everyday principal, a soft-spoken former special-ed teacher who has turned the school around from one that was getting failing grades only three years ago to one that is bright and cheerful and scoring above the state average.

Every morning at nine, Jarrett slips on a pair of flats and begins roaming the three floors of P.S. 154. After observing her ask The Question a number of times of wayward small folk, I tried it myself. When I spotted five-year-old Kenny in baggy jeans slinking along the wall on the second floor, I strode up to him and said, "Where do you belong?" He looked down, shuffled his little Nikes and mumbled the number of a classroom before shooting me a look that said, "Where do you belong?"

Good question, Kenny. I belonged to a group of 1,050 New Yorkers who participated in the annual Principal for a Day program run jointly by the Board of Education and a nonprofit group called PENCIL (Public Education Needs Civic Involvement in Learning). The idea is simple: get corporate and civic leaders involved with the city's public schools. This year's participants ranged from First Principal Hillary Clinton to actor Billy Baldwin. The program is part p.r., part guilt alleviation for well-heeled New Yorkers and part real insight into the New York City school system, which is the nation's largest, with 1,136 schools, more than a million students, 63,000 teachers and an annual budget bigger than the combined military spending of nato's three newest members: $8.9 billion.

Principal for a Day is in its fifth year, and has become a ritual for some of New York's Armani altruists, whose charity is usually limited to black-tie benefits. But seeing kids and teachers struggling to do the right thing in crumbling old school buildings has got industrialists and corporations to cough up real money for new playgrounds and gardens and reading and tutoring programs, including $10 million for new books. This year, for the first time, Los Angeles and Chicago have initiated copy-cat programs. Principal for a Day is one of the few areas of harmony between New York's warring Rudys: Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew.

During my day at P.S. 154, I participated in a blind taste test of Skippy peanut butter vs. a no-name brand in Ms. Gatling's second-grade science class. I diagrammed a sentence about dinosaurs in Mr. DeJesus' reading class. (One girl suggested that the dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't eat breakfast.) At 11, I washed my hands along with the four-year-olds of Ms. Harding's pre-K class before joining them in scarfing down their city-provided lunch of fish cakes and chocolate milk. (Almost 95% of the kids at P.S. 154 qualify for the city's free-lunch program, which means their families are below the poverty line.) I shot some hoops on the playground after lunch and was dismayed to see that all the hot-shot fifth-graders insisted on heaving air-balls from practically the 3-point line. (They blithely ignored their principal's exhortations to pass.) A principal, as it turns out, is part educator, part psychologist, part parent placater, part cop, part coach and part janitor.

The question "Where do you belong?" is appropriate in a larger sense because Elizabeth Jarrett has fostered a sense of community at her school. From 9:30 till 11 each morning every class works on reading and writing. Nearly half the students stay after school, from 3 to 5 for extra learning. Jarrett has started afternoon workshops for parents. She's had the place painted a rainbow of pop colors, from hot pink to lime green. And she seems to know the name of each one of the 612 students who skip down the halls. This feat is even harder than it sounds. Just listen to the school's symphony of exotic names: Brandasia. Kwanzaa. Romel. Jetiya. Falilon. Raven. Sade. Taisheen. Chanice. Mowaber. And Destynee.

At the end of the long day I stumbled into the teacher's lounge, where instead of packing up to go home my staff was laughing about the antics of some of the students. As I walked out, a tiny girl from pre-K came out of the bathroom next door and tugged me on the sleeve. "Somebody put a whole roll of toilet paper in the toilet," she said, "and now it's broken, but it wasn't me, I swear." Though I had only been principal for a day, I knew by now how to take charge of this sort of situation. "Where do you belong?" I asked.