An Interview with Sayre High School Principal Charles Ireland

Posted by on May 17, 2013

By Eden Kainer

I interviewed Principal Charles Ireland of Sayre High School to discuss the mission and vision he has developed for his school after his first year as principal. Sayre has a long history of intensive community partnerships with the University of Pennsylvania as well as other non-profits and community organizations. Additionally, the Sayre campus has many community resources such as an Olympic sized swimming pool, community health clinic and squash courts. Mr. Ireland’s vision is for Sayre and the surrounding community to maximize the use of these resources. He is developing highly unique programs in sports and Career and Technical Education such as scuba diving and aquaponics. In the Fall of 2013, Sayre will receive a Community Partnership Coordinator VISTA from PHENND in order to aid in the coordination of these partnerships and unique programs.

Q: Tell me a little bit about yourself and your school.

A: This is my first year here at Sayre, but I am a native of West Philly. I grew up only three blocks away. Before Sayre I was Assistant Principal at Mastbaum for one year, AP at Martin Luther King High School for five years prior to that, and a Principal Intern at Germantown. I have also spent five or six years in the Ed/Tech department for the School District. I taught biology at West Philly for two years, and spent one year as Technology substitute at Vaux. Before all of this, I was in industry for 12 years, developing Smart Card technology, meaning loyalty card programs, for the Community Federal Reserve.

Sayre High School has about 500 kids and is a low performing urban high school, similar to Bartram, West Philly and Overbrook High Schools, with similar attendance rates.  One thing unique about Sayre is that it was a middle school from the 1940s until 2005, when they started to adding higher grades and dropping the lower ones, to turn it into a high school. Another unique fact about Sayre is that it was initially built as a community hub for athletics and community based activities. The school was originally built with four squash courts that are still perfectly functional. Squash Smarts is coming in this summer to help us revitalize use of these courts. Leaps for Lacrosse is also coming in, to use a field [on the Sayre campus] built just five years ago. It is not big enough for a football field (20 feet short), so it is currently used for soccer and pick-up games. We want to start a Lacrosse club and really start using the field.

We are going to bring back swimming here as well and maybe even scuba diving! On the campus is the Sayre Recreation Center, which contains an Olympic sized swimming pool. This center is actually owned by the School District and leased to the City Recreation department; the building engineer is a SDP employee. Additionally, Sayre has the largest gymnasium in the city. We should be getting a sophisticated mesh system for separating the sides of the gym, to be able to hold different activities or games simultaneously.

We have huge amounts of unused space in basement. We are currently in discussion with the University of the Sciences about having them come in to build a Physical and Occupational Therapy clinic with their own funding. This center would be complimentary to the already existing Sayre Community Health Center, a fully federally qualified independent health center located in the back of the school. The center provides health services to underserved populations using feral subsidies to cover the uninsured and underinsured patients.

I have past experience with health centers: I helped build a small clinic inside of Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church that is operated by Einstein Hospital. We approached Pastor Waller to build a center and solicited Einstein to be the provider. I would like want to extend these centers to include more long term care programs, for example to manage chronic illnesses like diabetes. We are also interested in developing on on-site community health training program. We already have an area that replicates a health clinic that we could use for students, separate from our already functioning federal health center, with hospital beds, dental chairs and even a front desk for learning about insurance handling.

Q: In your opinion, what has been your greatest achievement at Sayre in this first year?

A: I have discovered that the kids are willing to learn, no matter what. I have also been pleasantly surprised at the willingness of the community and the partners to support a unified vision; that has been a pleasant surprise. I thought we would have to fight harder to get people to get on board.

Q: What has been your greatest challenge?

A: Dealing with all the uncertainty that the School District is throwing at us, but I am committed to this neighborhood.  There are a lot of impediments and uncertainty that the School District is fraught with at this time. You have to just moved forward and do what is right for the kids.

Also, money is an issue. Even when you get grants, it is often hard to direct your own resources.  We have a School Improvement Grant but they [the School District] will not allow us to buy technology to update what we have (e.g., memory, hard drives, new mother boards) because technology was stolen from the school in the past. We are only allowed to buy keyboards and mice.

Q: What are some of your goals for the future of this school?

A: Currently Sayre is a basic comprehensive high school, with no thematic focus. I want to make Sayre a school with unique programs like a health sciences track and scuba diving, programs that charter schools cannot afford to provide. In three years, I want Sayre to be wall-to-wall CTE [Career and Technical Education] academy that follows citywide admittance standards. Meaning you can require, like Dobbins or Mastbaum, a C average or better, less than 10 absences and no record of suspensions.–or the student can demonstrate an improvement in grades and behavior. We would retain 25% of the seats for a set-aside for Special Ed and local students. We will always have space for local students with interest in health sciences.

I want the students to be able to choose between three academies: an allied health academy including tracks in nursing and community health an environmental academy with a focus on natural resource management and a Freshman academy for 9^th graders, which will provide an immersion experience in career choices in addition to working on the basics.

I have a three year plan to get to this goal: In the first year I want to establish two tracking programs, health and natural resources that are city-wide admission. In the second year, I want to add a Community Health track and at that point we will change our name to become a health sciences academy. By the third year, we will be able to apply to become a citywide admissions school.

In the natural resource management area, I wanted to bring in an initial theme in aquaponics as a project based learning opportunity. My two science teachers have really taken off with this idea. They have gone out and talked with the Partnership Community Development Corporation, which has an aquaponics program at 60^th and Walnut, with a 25-foot tank growing tilapia and basil. This is in walking distance from Sayre and we are taking 75 kids from the 10^th and 11^th grade biology classes to see it.

We have built our own small aquaponic tanks, complete with tilapia and basil, in the science classroom with some seed fish donated from this program. We have also reached out to Cheyney University, which has a12,000 square foot aquaponics program on a large commercial scale, hydra and aqua program. They gave us guidance on design and testing procedures. Tomorrow a busload of kids is going out to Cheyney [the bus is being paid for by the Philadelphia Water Department] with teacher Mr. Bertram Johnson, who is our Roster Chair and math teacher but he was a farmer for ten years in California. He raised horses and commercial 20 acre farm.  He is going back to Temple to get Natural Management certification and beginning in September 2013, he will take on the new teaching position of Natural Resource Management Vocational Education teacher. We are presently recruiting students for this inaugural class in Natural Resource Management along with an inaugural class of Health Related Technology, lead by Ms. Yvonne Harris, RN.

Q: How do you envision using community partnerships to enhance your mission?

A: Community partnerships are what are going to make education relevant to the kids. In fact, the partnerships will add the relevance to our whole learning community—teachers and kids. It has got to be both.

Q: How can this VISTA project contribute to an improved school culture?

A: I would like the VISTA to help us expand partnerships in health and life sciences. There is a lot of potential synergy with big companies that are local to us. With these kinds of partnerships we don’t want to ask for money, but for meaningful internships and externships for both students and teachers. The teachers could do an externship over the summer and bring experience back to students in any number of areas. I would also like the VISTA to help us to integrate our thematic focus with practical projects. We would like the VISTAS to facilitate our goal of having every kid in our school having had participated in an internship by the time they graduate. The VISTA can help us find and manage these kinds of opportunities for our students.