Last year, chronic tardiness at Patterson Senior High School was solved by not taking roll until second period.
This year, the worst offenders are locked out of school and told to try again tomorrow.
The difference is Bonnie Erickson, Patterson's new principal.
In a bureaucracy riddled with politics, cynical observers aren't certain why Baltimore school Superintendent Walter G. Amprey plucked Ms. Erickson from the assistant principal's job at Harlem Park Community School to run Patterson.
Now in his fourth year as schools chief, Dr. Amprey says that Ms. Erickson's good qualities eventually would have earned her a principal's job. When the vacancy at Patterson popped up with Leon W. Tillett Jr.'s sabbatical, Dr. Amprey had a match in mind.
"I like her no-nonsense, tough-love approach," he said. "And the students recognize it as [the mark of] someone who really cares."
Ms. Erickson, 53, always believed that she'd retire as a principal, that before long she'd earn the top job "at some quiet, obscure middle school."
She never dreamed she'd get her chance as a firefighter called to an ugly blaze.
A 30-year veteran of the Baltimore school system, she says the Patterson job is easily the greatest challenge of her career.
"I've been given full rein," says Ms. Erickson, "I have above-average intelligence, I have a strong will and I hand-picked the greatest assistant principals in the world."
She also has nearly 1,900 students, among them 400 who are repeating the ninth grade, more than 100 who are chronically tardy and a belligerent cluster of sometimes violent troublemakers.
She inherited a 34-year-old nightmare of a building -- so bad that the first time she glimpsed the vermin-riddled structure on Kane Street she prayed that it wasn't Patterson -- and commands too few dollars for too many needs.
And if all that weren't enough, she has the state of Maryland looking over her shoulder, ready to take over if she fails.
Last year, Patterson become one of two city high schools threatened with state takeover because of "academic bankruptcy," an unprecedented measure to reverse years of declining academic performance, poor attendance and high dropout rates. It came close to being handed over for operation ** by a private school.
Along with her plans for physical improvement and "tightening the screws" on discipline, Ms. Erickson is planning self-contained academies inside Patterson. The academies -- five or six schools within the building -- will focus on specific subjects such as math and science, as well as career preparation such as hotel management. They will be in place next year. The state has accepted this still-evolving plan in principle and will monitor its progress before passing judgment on Patterson's fate.
"When I came here we didn't have a sound system in the cafeteria," she says. "We had 400 kids eating in there three times a day and no way to communicate with them. Last year they used a bullhorn. You don't talk to children with a bullhorn. What's next? Water hoses and dogs? I took $1,400 out of the treasury, and last week we put a sound system in the cafeteria.
L "Common sense hasn't been the password in education lately."
High marks from parents
Every Patterson staffer had to pass an interview with Ms. Erickson this summer before they were asked to return. About 60 out of 130 passed, she said; the rest are new hires.
The Erickson team -- along with her strategy of applying common sense, love and 10-to-14-hour workdays -- has only been in place for two months.
But it is getting consistently high marks from parents, students and community leaders who believed all along that Patterson should take care of its own problems without bringing in outsiders like the Hyde School, a Maine boarding school known for strict discipline and character-building.
"You remember what a negative parent I was when they wanted to turn us over to Hyde?" said Letty Herold, president of the Patterson parent-teacher association and the mother of an 11th-grader. "Well, Bonnie Erickson has given this negative parent some hope. I'll lay you a dime on a dollar she's behind in her paperwork because she's in the halls with the kids, not just when they do something wrong, but encouraging them when they do something right.
"She's action," said Ms. Herold. "Not just talk."
Said Chris Lambert, head of a local nonprofit advocacy group called Students First: "Bonnie reminds me of the quote from John Kennedy when he characterized himself as an idealist without illusions."
'Not just a playground'
Slowly but steadily, Ms. Erickson is weeding out the 40 or so students identified as a drag on the majority who want to learn. Last week, one student was arrested by city police and about five others were recommended for expulsion after isolated assaults broke out in the building.
Every morning, about 150 youngsters show up late for no good reason. Every morning, they're turned away to preserve the peace for the students who come to learn -- students like Maria Forakis, captain of the girl's soccer team.
"There's less people roaming around the hallways, the school looks better, and Miss Erickson has been getting rid of the hoodlums," said Maria, who is at the top of the senior class. "It's not just a playground anymore."
Ms. Erickson has used $200,000 in state money -- a good faith grant to Patterson to see if the school could work out its own problems -- to replace windows, lighting, and ceilings. Her approach to graffiti? Keep painting over it until the vandals tire of the game.
New belief system
Hardest of all, however, has been the effort to invent a new belief system for youngsters who don't even understand the purpose of school.
The teacher who helped mold Bonnie Erickson's belief system liked to take off his shoes, put his feet on a desk and enjoy an orange while talking to children about the news of the day.
His name was Mr. McCarthy, and in 1952 he taught young Bonnie in the sixth grade at Riverdale Elementary School in Prince George's County.
"I can still see him," says Ms. Erickson, daughter of a master baker and a 1959 graduate of Baltimore's Eastern High School. "He impressed me with the joy he brought to the classroom, with his love of life."
Inspiration for students
Such love -- a grown man making math and poetry come alive while remaining enough of a kid to jump rope on the playground -- inspired Ms. Erickson to become a teacher.
Some 40 years later, she believes the same inspiration can turn Patterson around.
"The students who show up wanting to learn wind up knowing more on Tuesday than they did on Monday," she says. "The problem is those who don't think learning is a priority. Very often, they're intelligent, but no one has ever told them why they're coming to school. And they're not getting it at home."
All adults at Patterson, be they teachers or custodians, are now expected to do something to fill the void in the lives of children who may not have anyone else to show them the way.
"If they need guidance, I want them to find it here. But before we can expect them to act in a school-like [way] they have to be taught what that is," says Ms. Erickson. "This is serious business, and with the state continuing to check on us, I don't have time to play. The children don't have time either."