Also known as Samohi and part of the
Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, this
high school is located in
Santa Monica, California, on 601 Pico Blvd, several blocks away from the
Pacific Ocean.
As of June 2004, this school is under the
tyrannical rule of a certain Dr.
Ilene Straus. Originally the
principal of the local Lincoln Middle School, she became the self proclaimed
CEO or Chief Educational Officer of Samohi.
After decades of
prosperity, Straus decided to split the school into a
House System, comprised of six independently administrated house systems: the S, A, M, O, H, and I houses. Each
faculty member is delegated into one of the six houses. The
official goal of this
system was to provide a more
personal learning environment. One of the main reasons for this system was
tax breaks and additional
funding for the school.
Administrators expected improved
test scores (and therefore more
state funding due to this system). However, a lurking variable in this plan is the
Hawthorne Effect. The Hawthorn Effect
stipulates that if a change is made in the
working environment, and the subjects (students) are told that they're
being watched, an increase in productivity will result regardless of whether the change was actually
beneficial.
The House System also creates useless
bureaucracy by the fact that so many new administrators are on a high salary
payroll,
leeching money from the school district’s budget. Another side-effect is competition between the houses. Houses occasionally give out food and treats in the form of special parties to students from their house alone, ostracizing other students who were arbitrarily segregated into their houses, theoretically based on race, sex,
GPA, income, and social status. This causes other houses to create their own
free food giveaways. This
phenomenon is expected to continue for years. And people ask where all the money goes.
The budget cuts eventually work their way down to the students. They are the ones who suffer. They are stuck with cheap
text books written several decades ago. One physics teacher had students write "
current events" from magazines published in the
1970s.
One problem that plagues the district is known as
tenure. While usually set at approximately 12 years for a normal workplace, the school has a
2 year tenure. This causes the district to automatically fire teachers before their 2 year tenure sets in, creating a state of lower
job security and subtracting even more money from the budget due to all the time spent training teachers. This also means that older teachers who have somehow gotten past their
prime teaching years and have less to contribute to students due to their physical or
mental state stay in the system, while new teachers with enthusiasm and fresh ideas are rejected because of this extremely short tenure.
The school’s food selection is exceptionally limited. They sell high
fat and
cholesterol junk food on the majority of their menu, from brand names such as
Pizza Hut and
McDonald’s. There are also many vending machines. After insistent criticism from concerned parents, a
salad bar, though pathetic, has been added. There is still a scarcity of genuinely nutritious food sold in the campus. The lack of capacity and healthy food has allowed the
administration to grant off campus lunch passes, effectively
outsourcing students’ money to local businesses, draining a tremendous amount of money from the school’s budget each year.
Questioning the system leads to great trouble for the school’s faculty. Anyone who questions the CEO has great risk of expulsion. One teacher is currently in the process of being fired because a student threw a pencil during her annual
evaluation period. The evaluator’s opinion was that the student’s action reflected the teacher’s poor standards for
classroom management.
The system shows no
sign of improvement. The house system, while disguised as beneficial for students, hurts all parties involved, and the budget is rapidly declining. Perhaps in the future, a new CEO will rise and lead the school to a better
future.