Live and Learn

I was elected to the Walter Reed Middle School LEARN Council at Back-to-School Night in October 1995 because no one else volunteered for a vacant seat. I wish I could say that duty prompted me to declare my candidacy in front of an auditorium full of parents, but mostly I was driven by personal worries: Would my son, then 11, be safe on this crowded and worn North Hollywood campus? Would he find caring and dynamic teachers? Would he learn? * This month ends my second and last year on Reed’s LEARN Council. Our biweekly meetings, convened after the dismissal bell and often lingering long into the evening, have put me on the front lines in one school’s battle to do better by its students. The Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now--or LEARN, the Los Angeles Unified School District’s experiment in school autonomy--now includes 38% of the city’s schools. The district hopes this reform will kill calls for its breakup and pull student test scores, attendance and graduation rates out of the basement. At Reed and elsewhere, those expectations remain unfulfilled and unpredictable. * For many of us on the 23-person council, there was no formal orientation, no manual, no experience necessary. We sat down in the library with the teachers, staff and students and tackled one problem at a time, one day at a time. When Reed joined LEARN in 1994, the school set its own breathtakingly ambitious goals. Most of its 1,900 students are Latino, many are white, and the rest are African American and Asian--and 63% are poor enough to qualify for free or reduced-cost school meals. The school, according to its action plan, aims to improve students’ educational achievement, generate more parental involvement--and “decrease [the] use of . . . foster care, incarceration and hospitalization.” Not surprisingly, Reed hasn’t achieved most of this. But the LEARN Council has accomplished some minor miracles. We have rescheduled classes, added staff and equipment, improved discipline and, not so easily quantifiable, generated new enthusiasm on campus.

Our decision a year ago to require students to wear uniforms, beginning in September 1996, was acrimonious. Reed’s teachers proposed uniforms as a way to improve student discipline and end the frustration they experienced enforcing the school’s old dress code. Too many boys, they said, arrived in baggy gang-style pants and too many girls in revealing blouses.

But parents were bitterly divided, with some adamant that uniforms would interfere with their child’s right of self-expression. Negotiations continued for months before Reed’s principal, Larry Tash, extracted a fragile consensus to impose uniforms--a white polo shirt and navy skirt or pants--by promising to review the policy at the end of the 1996-97 academic year.

*

Sept. 17, 1996, LEARN Council--There are several familiar faces in the library as we assemble for our first meeting. Nearly all of the 10 parents are veterans of bake sales, silent auctions and governing boards at other schools our children have attended, and most are like me: eager but nervous about shouldering responsibility for running a school.

“I want to be involved in a committee to examine the uniform policy,” said Christian Smith, 34. A tall psychotherapist who’s partial to shorts and T-shirts, Smith, a parent of an eighth grader, is running for a council seat; the elections will be held Oct. 24. He wants to overturn the school’s uniform policy because it is an “authoritarian form of control on student bodies,” laying the “groundwork for fascism.”

Social studies teacher Marcia McHarg, wearing the Reed uniform, says she was “absolutely blown away by how much quieter and calmer this campus is this year.”

“Look, 98% of the kids showed up the first day wearing the uniform,” says Barbara Sudman, chair of Reed’s English department. That’s hardly widespread dissatisfaction with the policy, she insists.

“But you didn’t do any research,” Smith counters.

“We did,” says Lee Pasternak, a parent who participated in the original decision. “We used the Long Beach schools.”

“How many schools?” asks Smith. “You mean you used a sample of one?”

“No,” says Pasternak tersely. “We used the whole district.”

Principal Tash manages to end the debate by suggesting that we all need time to read Smith’s memo before we discuss the uniform policy again. In eight years at Reed, Tash, 49, has presided over countless meetings of this ilk. Rumpled and self-deprecating, he is liked and respected by many of Reed’s faculty and parents. He listens, he remembers names and he laughs easily. Tash’s office is jammed with magic cards, a clay open-mouth alligator that holds paper clips, piles of paper and notebooks and lots of dust. Among the students, he is known for his magic tricks and his neckties, which feature Mickey Mouse, the Tasmanian Devil or the Dodgers’ logo.

Before coming to Reed, Tash taught math and social studies and was an assistant principal. One of his sons is now a seventh grader on campus.

Oct. 1, 1996, LEARN Council--Music teacher Yolanda Gardea stands in front of us, holding a huge multicolored chart while principal Tash talks about the district’s new curriculum standards. The chart displays what will be expected of students in every major subject from kindergarten through 12th grade.

The rest of us have little to say after Tash speaks. I wonder if we are silent because it left looming questions that no one can answer. Will students be held back if they fail to master the skills according to this timetable? What should happen to their teachers?

This is the crux of the district’s problem: students who fail to learn but are passed, like hot potatoes, to the next grade or the next school. This council certainly doesn’t have a solution.

In the meantime, Tash asks for ideas to better supervise the many kids who hang out on the front lawn after school. Christian Smith volunteers to be part of a committee to study the problem.

*

Oct. 15, 1996, LEARN Council--How shall we allocate the $190,000 in block-grant funds Reed gets from the state and district? The key to LEARN is the flexibility it gives schools to define spending priorities. But many schools, used to taking orders from downtown on everything from how much copying paper they can use to who will teach their classes, reach hesitantly for the reins of control. Reed’s LEARN Council has steadily grown more independent. But it is not always obvious which spending choices will do the most for our students.

“Larry, I’ve got to say that the sixth graders need textbooks,” says Pasternak. “This is a serious concern for me.” Pasternak, 43, has two children at Reed. She knows about the textbook shortage from her sixth grade daughter, and she also knows that the LEARN Council can solve the problem. Pasternak, who is serving her second year on the council, has educated herself on school and district procedures. Smart and direct, Pasternak is a Reed booster who has strong opinions about how the school should change; currently, textbooks for the sixth graders is at the top of her list.

This fall Reed “reconfigured” from a junior high school (seventh through ninth grade) to a middle school (sixth through eighth grade), as the district required. While the school sent its ninth-grade textbooks to North Hollywood High along with the entering ninth graders, Reed’s feeder elementary schools did not all do the same. Some schools were reluctant to part with texts that covered material for more than sixth grade. Many schools that did pass along their books had only a classroom set in each subject. Thus, most entering sixth graders do not have their own textbooks in each subject, and many teachers inherited a mishmash of class sets--some of one text, some of another. Others got none at all. “We’ve had to invent as we’ve gone along,” says sixth grade math and science teacher Stephanie Zierhut. “We’ve spent a lot of time this year copying lesson plans and work sheets.”

Textbook purchases are on the 11-item priority list the council developed in past years--but toward the bottom. The magnitude of the shortage has shocked all of us. We can buy books, but we will have little left over if we do. Supplying the 600 sixth graders with their own copies of a standard English anthology (at $45 each) runs to $27,000. Add math and science texts and the total spirals. Pasternak and I join a small group when Tash asks for volunteers to recommend whether to buy all these books this year and how to finance the purchase. As a member of this newly christened Budget Committee, I should know the difference between state block grants, “4170 funds,” and “Goals 2000 funds.” I haven’t a clue.

*

Oct. 24, 1996, Back-to-School Night--The Venetian blinds covering the tall windows in William Fitz-Gibbon’s classroom are holdovers, I’m convinced, from my days as an L.A. Unified student. The same hospital green, the same dusty wide slats. One set of blinds has big brown stains, another has fallen halfway from its moorings, letting a fugitive bit of light into the classroom from the top of the window.

Along the back wall are more than a dozen plaques won by Fitz-Gibbon’s students in mathematics competitions. Fitz, as he is known, has taught at Reed for 28 years. Eccentric, maddeningly disorganized but revered, he’s as close to a legend as anyone on Reed’s faculty. Kids work to gain admission to his class, then sweat to stay there.

But to be a parent in Fitz’s classroom this evening is to come face to face with the decay of Reed’s--and indeed the entire district’s--facilities. A periodic table of the elements hangs above the blackboard at the front of the room (Fitz also teaches science). Its edges are torn on several sides. The bottom is frayed and illegible.

Fitz’s classroom is more disheveled than most I’ve visited at Reed but only by degree. Walter Reed first opened its doors in 1939; a brass plaque on the cafeteria’s exterior indicates that the school was a New Deal project. The main building, facing a quiet residential street, is graced with colorful Spanish tiles. Ironically, because Reed looks “Midwestern” to producers, the school has appeared in the movie “Sgt. Bilko” and the TV show “Picket Fences.” Such sessions net the school $3,000, with additional fees paid to the district.

Inside the front doors, the years have been less kind to Reed. Some drinking fountains work; some don’t. The plumbing can have problems. Many ceiling tiles are missing; others have ominously come unglued at a corner. Replacement is not in the budget.

*

Oct. 28, 1996, Budget Committee--After hearing from other sixth grade parents at Back-to-School Night, principal Tash acknowledges that the textbook shortage is of more widespread concern than he first thought. I admire his ability to shift direction without seeming defensive. Tash and his teachers wanted uniforms last year; the LEARN Council supported the policy, however tenuously, but they might not have. This year parents are concerned about textbooks; Tash is trying to respond. While principals at some schools have resisted LEARN for fear that it means ceding power, Tash has learned to share and still lead.

Between 8 and 9 this morning, before parents race to work and teachers scatter to classrooms, he wants us to figure out how many books Reed needs and how we can pay for them. We will present our recommendations to the full council.

Answering the first question was hard enough. Meeting in the faculty lounge, amid cast-off couches and a humming vending machine, we spread out the textbook inventories each teacher has completed. We learn which books teachers have, but we still have to find out which ones they want more of, which they would like to replace.

I did not imagine that school reform would involve dozens of such small decisions: Which English anthology we should buy? Should sixth graders have lockers? Should we lease new computers or buy them? Should we supervise the kids on the front lawn after school? And even how many free-dress days should students be allowed?

*

Nov. 5, 1996, LEARN Council--It’s election night and Tash sports a windbreaker, made from an American flag, and a sequined red, white and blue necktie. Our goal for the evening is to agree on our spending priorities. But even our new list--textbook purchases are now our second priority--generates more discussion.

“I don’t disagree we need to make this textbook purchase,” fumes counselor Leslie Schilo, “but it’s outrageous that we have to spend money on books. This is a district expense.” She wants the council to protest to the Board of Education. Lee Pasternak volunteers to draft the letter.

“Leslie, I understand your frustration,” says Barbara Sudman, the English chair, “but my teachers need the books.”

At the same time, new furniture, a major goal for Sudman, has dropped to No. 7. She wants several classroom worktables but fears the textbooks will defer those tables for yet another year. “The middle school curriculum guidelines say children should engage in group work,” she laments, “but that’s simply impossible when kids are sitting at 40 individual desks in a room.”

Schilo is hoping for enough new cafeteria chairs so that all children can sit down while they eat. Yet she worries that any new furniture money will go to classrooms and that kids will continue to eat lunch standing up.

These are impossible choices. We can’t know whether buying worktables will do more for student achievement than providing enough chairs for kids to sit on while they eat. In my more cynical moments, LEARN seems a way for the district’s top officials to dodge blame for any expenditure decision. With the district so chronically underfunded and schools such as Reed without even the basic supplies they need, sure, let folks like me at individual schools take the heat from other parents and politicians. We can make the tough decisions between more copying paper and textbooks, between worktables and cafeteria chairs and call it educational “reform.”

With all objections noted, the council approves the list as presented and moves on to yet another discussion of uniforms. Earlier, Tash introduced the five newly elected parent representatives to the council. Among them is Christian Smith, who wants to overturn the school’s uniform policy.

“We blew it,” one student admits in assessing Reed’s first free-dress day of the year, on Halloween. Students were supposed to come in costume or in uniform; too many wore neither. Teachers reported far more discipline problems than usual, a pattern that would repeat itself on subsequent free-dress days.

“It’s not that you blew it,” says Smith, addressing the three students present. “Don’t think of it that way. Don’t apologize. You should regard this as an opportunity to express yourself.”

I’m sitting next to Stephanie Zierhut, who grades tests during the meeting. Her home is in Camarillo, almost an hour’s drive away. This is the second evening meeting in a row for her. As Smith talks, parents and teachers mutter to one another; it is past 8:30 and I am tired.

*

Nov. 13, 1996, the Pops Concert--Yolanda Gardea is transformed. In place of her usual navy slacks and white polo shirt, the auditorium curtains part to reveal her in an elegant floor-length black dress and pearl necklace. With her shiny black hair swept into a barrette, Gardea looks striking, even though she’s already put in a 12-hour day, rehearsing young musicians and hanging stage decorations.

Gardea, chair of Reed’s music department and a member of the LEARN Council, begins the year’s first concert by introducing band teacher Michael Stanley and choral teacher Janice Kueppers. “And I’m Ms. Gardea,” she tells the packed auditorium, “the most tired member of the faculty.”

During the next 90 minutes, the advanced instrumental and choral groups move through a program that ranges from the theme from “Schindler’s List” to a medley from Disney’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” bringing the audience to its feet. With the final ovation, Tash takes the stage, wearing a bright yellow happy-face necktie. He says his fellow principals told him he was nuts to put on a concert so early in the year. “But they don’t know Walter Reed,” beams Tash.

The previous evening, our son had asked if he could stay at Reed to practice and hang out with his fellow musicians from the day’s last bell until the evening concert. Despite his insistence, we were skeptical that Gardea would be supervising continuously. Surely Gardea needs a few minutes’ peace after a full day with loud pre-adolescents. Where would she change into her concert clothes? I had demanded of my son the night before.

“In the faculty bathroom, quickly,” she says later, smiling.

Concert day is not unusual for her. Indeed, the success of LEARN--however one measures it--depends on the willingness of hundreds of Yolanda Gardeas, Stephanie Zierhuts and Larry Tashes across the district to donate lunch hours, evenings, conference periods and even weekends without end--and without pay. Certainly, faculty and staff devote these hours at other schools not part of LEARN, but the recognition that LEARN almost requires this sort of com- mitment has caused other schools to balk at joining. Yet if LEARN causes improvements at Reed, it is as much because of teachers like Gardea as the latitude LEARN gives schools.

Gardea, 35, is in her 12th year at Reed, the only full-time teaching job she’s had. She is devoted to her students, and, judging by hugs and flowers students give her after the concert, the feeling seems mutual. As head of the Music Department, she oversees instrumental and choir instruction for 650 kids, organizes a full slate of concerts each year and chaperones Reed’s performance groups at statewide competitions.

This year, Gardea is the faculty’s liaison to the council. Most of her conference and recess periods are devoted to LEARN work--gathering information and talking with teachers, parents and administrators. LEARN Council and other meetings are on top of that.

What’s the payoff? The school’s teachers voted for LEARN, Gardea says, because “they felt things couldn’t get any worse.” Unable to change even the basic conditions of their work environment, teachers blamed “them,” the district, for all problems, from their crumbling building to their students’ unimpressive academic performance. “Now we talk about what we are going to do about a particular problem and how are we going to make things better for children. Each change has made teachers happier. And when the teachers are happier, more learning takes place.”

But what about better test scores? “Test scores don’t measure how well a kid feels he belongs in a school, how his or her teachers feel toward him. Those things are important,” she says, “especially for lower-achieving kids.”

*

Nov. 19, 1996, LEARN Budget Committee--Bad news. The district is only giving us $60 of the $66 per child each school gets in state grant funds. District officials fear they may not get that $6 from the state. Principal Tash says we may get this money later, or the district may keep it for administrative expenses. We also get less than we expected because the district claims Reed’s average attendance is lower than Tash believes it is. He’ll challenge that figure, but the bottom line is we will receive $18,000 less than we expected.

“Where should we cut our budget?” Tash asks as we sit down in the faculty lounge. One alternative is to buy a classroom set of science texts for each teacher this year and wait until next year to buy enough books for each child. That would eliminate most of the shortfall. We had already agreed to spend $50,000 for new sixth grade math and English texts, enough so that each child would soon have a book. Those orders went to publishers this week. None of the six of us around the table this morning is comfortable delaying the science texts without the approval of the science teachers.

*

Nov. 19, 1996, LEARN Council--In the library, three students outline plans for a December dance. Mindful of the Halloween dress-code violations, the kids have a good idea for the day of the holiday dance: Students would be required to wear their uniforms but could add Christmas sweaters, Santa hats or other accessories representative of Hanukkah or Kwanzaa.

We agree. But the uniform issue seems to divide us like no other. Anxious to please the adults, the students suggest that free-dress days be a reward for keeping the campus clean.

Christian Smith chuckles; I know what is coming. “Your ability to dress as you want to was your right,” he insists, leaning forward. “You lost it because of the vote of this council. You don’t need to earn it back, to bribe the faculty for the right to dress as you wish.”

“Yes, free dress is a bribe,” Barbara Sudman sputters, “but what’s wrong with that?”

“It’s OK,” interjects one student, upset that the request has provoked such adult anger, “I really don’t care whether we have them. I like uniforms.”

Yolanda Gardea addresses Smith directly: “In this room there is consensus. Most can live with uniforms. Even those who oppose this policy see value in it. I can’t convince you to support it, but you know that we are looking at how to do it better. I feel that you’re trying to convince us that we shouldn’t do this anymore. I don’t think that’s right. Can you go with the consensus?”

“I’ll hang for the year,” Smith says quietly, head down, “but I still want to study the issue.”

Turning to the budget is a relief. Since our budget meeting, Tash has asked the science chair to ask her teachers if they could live with classroom sets of textbooks for this year with the promise of enough books next year for each child. In the meantime, Tash asks if we are comfortable with this option, but Pasternak says, “I still want us to buy those books.”

As they talk, parent Barbara Roller, an attorney and accountant, does something none of us in all these meetings has thought to do: On her purse calculator, she totals each category of funding on the budget sheet Tash has distributed and then totals our projected spending. “Larry,” she announces, puzzled, “I come up with a shortfall of just $2,600.” One campus filming session would close that gap.

“So this was all a waste of time?” Tash asks, smiling weakly. He sinks back into his chair. There is visible relief in the room. As a member of the Budget Committee, I too feel relieved--and incompetent.

The last item is approval of the letter Pasternak drafted insisting that the Board of Education reimburse us for the textbooks we bought. Her letter is forceful and persuasive, much like Pasternak herself. Everyone signs.

*

Jan. 14, 1997, LEARN Council--Good news. The school board will reimburse another $2,000 after receiving our letter. But even with that money plus the $5,000 Reed initially received for costs associated with reconfiguration, we’ve still spent $80,000 for textbooks that the district and state should have supplied as a matter of course. Outrageous.

*

Jan. 28, 1997, LEARN Council--Math teacher Fitz-Gibbon seems lost in his stack of geometry tests during an arid exchange over scheduling the eighth grade trip to Magic Mountain and future meetings of Reed’s Bilingual Advisory Council. The LEARN Council controls Reed’s calendar. But Fitz-Gibbon and I snap awake as one teacher’s last-minute request to take his class on a field trip ignites an angry debate over student assessment and achievement.

Reed has traditionally asked teachers not to plan trips or special activities during what the faculty calls Stop Week, the second-to-last week of the term. Teachers who give final exams use that week to review the term’s work. But other teachers feel that finals are inappropriate for middle-schoolers.

“We’re not a little high school,” declares English teacher Sudman, who resists the idea of imposing finals, “we’re a middle school.” The expectations for our students are necessarily different, she insists.

But absent comprehensive tests, Pasternak demands, “how can students cement what they’ve learned over the term, and how can parents evaluate how well that teacher has taught?”

“You only care about the bright students,” Sudman accuses.

“Just a minute, Barbara,” Pasternak says, her voice quavering. “I deeply resent what you just said. I have the same goals as you: to raise the level of each and every child in this school.”

The issue of testing is always touchy. Tonight we are talking about final exams, but standardized tests produce the same divisions. California students have among the worst reading and math scores in the nation. But if the key to raising those scores seems obvious to many parents and politicians--more finals, standardized tests and clear consequences for failing tests--teachers and administrators often see more complexities.

“California’s schools, including those in this district, are probably more successful in educating academically oriented kids than schools elsewhere,” Tash tells me one morning. “But public schools are middle-class institutions. We don’t always do as good a job with children with different values. If LEARN only creates a better atmosphere, that’s an improvement for all children. When people like the school their kids go to, learning takes place.”

So Reed uses LEARN to forge stronger links between home and school. The school’s Parenting Center, a converted lounge staffed by volunteers, offers parents computer training, English instruction and forums on adolescent issues. With this school year, Reed has replaced the traditional six 52-minute periods each day with a modified “block schedule” of 72-minute periods three days a week and a traditional schedule on other days. We devised this schedule last year to encourage more leisurely instruction in some classes each week without losing momentum in the others.

We resolve little tonight. One parent proposes we rename Finals Week as Assessment Week. The name change is meant to encourage teachers to offer some sort of review but gives them wide latitude--perhaps a final exam, perhaps self-evaluation by students, perhaps something else. The debate over testing, however, will not go away.

*

Feb. 18, 1997, LEARN Council--As a third-year LEARN school, Reed is now eligible to take over a much bigger share of its budget. Tash tells me later that he had been too busy on campus to attend district meetings before the holidays, when this news was presented. Reed’s size and its high attendance rate mean we get $315,000. Wonderful news. Much of this money is earmarked, but Tash recommends, and the council agrees, to stash away half the sum as a reserve for next year. That still leaves $85,000, which the faculty wants to use for “wish-list” items, supplies they have long gone without. But some parents want the funds spent on a “big item” with a measurable impact on the curriculum: several new computers or shop equipment. “We’re at a wonderful point,” Barbara Roller notes, “where we can brainstorm about where we want this school to be and then use that money to get there.”

Gardea agrees, “but maybe this year we should address some of the morale problems on campus.” A map showing the current boundaries of what used to be Yugoslavia, a few more electric pencil sharpeners, cafeteria chairs we couldn’t afford in November, an overhead projector that works: These things would go a long way toward making teachers feel better about what they’re doing, and students will benefit.

After more back-and-forth, we agree with the faculty. Teachers, parents, students or staff can apply for funding. Tash leaves for home, his voice gone and fighting a cold.

Before we close, Gardea reports that the teachers want to compete for a vocational grant, co-sponsored by the school district and the National Guard, using computers to teach kids such basic engineering concepts as how a suspension bridge works or how aircraft fly. To apply, Reed must submit a proposal within just three weeks. But first, Gardea needs the council’s approval.

There are enthusiastic nods and murmurs as she talks. But then Christian Smith speaks up: “I strongly oppose any association with the National Guard. I’ve worked for years to get the killers and assassins out of our school. They want to militarize our schools by handing out book covers and pens with American flags or symbols of the National Guard.”

The National Guard’s involvement, Gardea replies, is to provide a teacher for this course, actually a teacher-trainee, who is unlikely to be in uniform. In any event, she says, all we want at this point is agreement about whether to apply for the grant.

“Do we have that consensus?” she asks, looking anxiously around the room.

“No,” Smith says. “I block consensus.”

“How can you obstruct this?” thunders one parent.

“I’m not opposed to shop classes,” he says, “but this is an ideological war.” Before he agrees to let the school apply, Smith says, he wants a letter from the National Guard promising that they will not distribute “propaganda” on campus.

Gardea again appeals to Smith, asking him to permit teachers to write the proposal and promising to seek the council’s approval to accept the National Guard funds if Reed wins. I marvel at how she keeps her cool. Smith relents, Gardea has a consensus and the dozen of us present have now spent half an hour on an issue that should have taken five minutes.

*

March 4, 1997, LEARN Council-- Two teachers have visited a local school where the computer-assisted engineering curriculum was up and running. The instructor was not in a National Guard uniform, Gardea reports, and he distributed no book covers or pens with American flags or the Guard logo. Nevertheless, she says, “We decided not to apply this year.”

Reed still needs to find space on campus and identify a faculty member who would have time to work with the program. Besides, the proposal deadline is just three days away. “We can’t make it,” she sighs, “but we hope to try next year.” I sense that Smith’s posturing at our last meeting killed the teachers’ enthusiasm.

*

May 20, 1997, LEARN Council--In front of each of us is a stack of paper: opinion surveys of Reed parents, students and teachers and budget projections for next year. Tonight we decide what worked, what to change for next September.

We first tackle report cards. Parents say they want more feedback. So in September, teachers will send home three letter-grade reports each term instead of two.

Team teaching and the new block schedule, two of the biggest changes we made last fall, generally win high marks. We offer up minor changes--”tweaks” someone calls them--but then vote to let the teachers take this over. Leslie Schilo, who led both changes, smiles: “So we’ll let the tweakers tweak.”

“Now, what do we have to say about uniforms?” asks principal Tash with mock innocence. After the months of teeth-gnashing, we break into laughter, with even Christian Smith joining in. Our surveys find that parents and teachers overwhelmingly favor uniforms; many students hate them.

“Do we have consensus to keep uniforms next year?” Tash asks. “No, I block consensus,” Smith says, but calmly this time, resigned. Without consensus, Tash says, “we’ll have to vote. How many in favor of keeping the uniform rule?” All hands but two go up: Smith’s and one student’s.

“I would like all incoming students to know that their parents can sign a uniform waiver,” Smith adds, almost halfheartedly. Tash says that information is already available but he’ll double-check.

Report cards, uniforms waivers, team teaching, pencil sharpeners, more cafeteria chairs: This is how “reform” happens at Reed, one decision building on the next on matters both momentous and minor.

The future of LEARN at Reed is not on the table tonight. Indeed, whether LEARN is a success or failure here no longer really matters. There is no discussion of leaving the program, no concern that it’s too troublesome and no doubt that new faces will gather in the library next September.