SMALL MIRACLES
By DIANE RAVITCH

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December 19, 2004 -- THE headlines are familiar: Students fighting in the high schools; police officers assigned to the most troubled schools to restore order; high-school graduation rates hovering around 50 percent; a state court orders the state and city to raise yearly spending on the city's public schools from about $12,000 per pupil to about $20,000; the city's schools mired in regulations, rules and mandates.
Now enter an alternate reality with me as I visit St. Joseph High School on Willoughby Street in Brooklyn.

The school is housed in a narrow, 10-story building, located in a gritty inner-city neighborhood. It has no playground - and no metal detectors or security guards. The halls are calm, with no students roaming about and classroom doors not locked to keep out intruders.

Founded 100 years ago by the Sisters of St. Joseph, the school's mission is to serve poor and working-class girls. A generation ago, St. Joseph enrolled 1,400 girls, mainly the children of European immigrants. Now it enrolls 330 children of African-American, Caribbean and Hispanic families.

The tuition is $4,400. Nearly half the students receive reduced tuition. The actual cost of educating each girl is $6,400 - far less than the state's annual outlay of $12,000 a student.

The school makes up the difference by fund-raising and renting out three floors of its building to city agencies for welfare-to-work programs. It gets no subsidy from the Diocese of Brooklyn, relying instead on the help of the Sisters of St. Joseph, who own the building and provide medical benefits for the school staff.

Just to keep its doors open, St. Joseph HS must raise $400,000 each year that is not covered by tuition or rent or any other source of funding.

Although many come from stable families, the student body includes girls who live in desperate poverty; daughters of incarcerated women; girls with a parent living with HIV/AIDS; students in foster care; and refugees from Africa, Latin America and China. Some 55 percent of the students are black; 40 percent are Hispanic, with nearly 5 percent Asian and less than 1 percent white.

THE school's results are re markable. An amazing 98 percent of the girls complete high school, and 90 percent of the graduates attend college.

Small miracles happen here. This unlikely school has produced a speech team that consistently wins state and national competitions. The library is brimming with its trophies. Last year, the team ranked as one of the top five in the nation, having bested hundreds of public and private high schools. The girls' achievement is even more miraculous in light of the fact that their coach, David Risley, is legally deaf.

Despite the low tuition, the girls get a lot of personal attention. The faculty of 35 teachers is augmented by four guidance counselors and a social worker, who help the youngsters with both academic and personal problems.

If a girl is in trouble, if she is suddenly homeless, the school takes care of her with immediate assistance, finding her a home or piano lessons or a tutor or whatever else she needs.

ST. Joseph's guiding philoso phy fosters respect for the dignity and uniqueness of each individual. The school can act promptly because it is not part of a bureaucracy. The principal, Sister Eugenia Calabrese, has full charge of her domain, both as academic leader and as plant manager. She can make decisions in the best interest of her students without asking permission, filling out forms, following regulations or bowing to mandates. She answers, as the saying goes, to a higher authority.

Only six of the 35 faculty are nuns. The rest make a considerable financial sacrifice. The starting salary at the school is $26,000 (compared to $39,000 in the public schools). The salary at the top of the scale for a teacher with a master's degree and more than 20 years of classroom experience is about $40,000 (against $81,000 in the public schools).

Why do the teachers stay here when they could double their take-home pay by transferring to the public sector? I asked Celina Jamieson, one of the school's mathematics teachers.

Jamieson started her career at St. Joseph, then taught in a public high school - Thomas Jefferson - for 13 years. She came back to St. Joseph when her own daughter finished her education. She said that at Thomas Jefferson she spent most of her time on discipline issues, while at St. Joseph, she's able to teach willing students.

What about the money? "There's more to life than money," she said. "This school has a tranquility that allows me to do what I love: to teach students mathematics."

IN contrast to the Department of Education's 27 pages of discipline procedures, the code at St. Joseph could easily fit onto less than a single page. It's simple: Students are not permitted to smoke in or near the school. Drugs, alcohol and weapons are prohibited. Fighting is not permitted. Anyone who violates these rules is subject to suspension or dismissal. Students are expected to wear neat, clean uniforms. They are expected to have good attendance and to be punctual. They are not allowed to ride in the elevator unless an adult is present.

That's it. Can girls be expelled for bad behavior? Of course. But it seldom happens, because the atmosphere of safety, tranquility and mutual respect benefits everyone, student or adult.

Compared to public schools, which have made a virtue of electives and specialized subjects, St. Joseph's curriculum is bare bones: religious studies for four years (although one-quarter of the girls are not Catholic, all take religion classes); English for four years; history and government for four years; science for three years; mathematics for three years; Spanish for two years; physical education or dance for four years. The only electives are art, business, computer, accelerated Spanish and Latin.

I VISITED St. Joseph HS be cause I wondered how it would survive when the city public schools eventually get the multibillion-dollar bonanza from the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit.

The increased funding will surely expand the already large difference between the salaries of public-school teachers and nonpublic-school teachers. Elite private schools for children of the rich, like Horace Mann and Brearley, will have no trouble keeping pace. But what will happen to St. Joseph and other schools that educate poor and working-class children when yearly spending at the public schools reaches $20,000 per student? Will schools like St. Joseph be able to find enough teachers willing to make a personal financial sacrifice?

I came away from my interviews with faculty, administrators and students convinced that St. Joseph and schools like it are an invaluable resource for the city's children. Surely New York City's educational opportunities would be substantially narrowed if schools like St. Joseph disappear, if there were no safe haven for the families who have chosen this kind of education.

ST. Joseph is not seeking public funding. It seeks merely to persist in its mission of serving young women and serving the poor.

I have a modest suggestion. Over the past year, Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein joined the successful legal fight to add billions more for public schools. At the same time, they raised over $175 million in private donations for the public schools. Now that the public schools will be amply supported by state and city dollars, why don't they concentrate their prodigious fund-raising ability in support of the nonpublic sector?

If Mayor Bloomberg were to raise or give a few million for St. Joseph HS, it could accept an additional 100 students and secure its future as a vibrant institution.

If the success of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity results in the eventual collapse of schools like St. Joseph High School, it would be a loss for the city and its children.

Diane Ravitch is a Research Professor at New York University and a historian of the New York City public schools.