KNIGHTSEN SCHOOL The Little School that Could
	DECEMBER 2004

by Chris Scott

Vickey Rinehart took over the job as Superintendent/Principal of Knightsen School fifteen years ago. She expected to remain in the position for no more than three years, building her resume so she could move to a better job someplace else.

It didn’t take Vickey long to change her plans and goals. She said that she made the discovery that Knightsen School was the most wonderful place in the world for her to be.

Vickey had found a place to put down roots. And she put them down deep!

As of this writing, Knightsen School has 464 students enrolled in grades K to 8. Vickey said that the school is a perfect size, since everybody knows everybody else — at least by sight. She said that everyone in the school — students, teachers, and staff — have the feeling of being a member in a large extended family. And it’s a Big Fat Greek Wedding kind of family.

Vickey and the others on the staff operate Knightsen School with a spirit of camaraderie and good will. “There’s a much different atmosphere around here than in the big schools,” Vickey said. “This school is a merry place. It is a spiritually healthy place.”

Growing a School Everyway They Can
Knightsen School is a fascinating institution located in a curious community. The town of Knightsen is a refreshing little backwater kind of a place that has deliberately exempted itself from the exploding growth going on in most of the rest of East County.

There are only about 1,000 residents in Knightsen itself. The town controls its growth by deliberately failing to develop the infrastructure that growth would require. For example, there’s no municipal water or sewage systems so it is impossible to build more than one house on every five acres of land. Some areas won’t support more than one house for every ten acres.

But the school district extends beyond the boundaries of the town into parts of Oakley, Brentwood, and Byron. Knightsen School has become a school of choice for people who wish to send their children into a smaller institution. It uses inter-district transfers as a way to create a growing school in the middle of a community that isn’t growing.

A town like Knightsen can remain small and charming but a school that doesn’t grow will invariably stagnate and the quality of the education it provides will diminish. Knightsen School was forced to grow in order to receive the funding necessary to continue to remain a first-rate educational institution.

School funding is tied to student headcount, so increasing the census of the school was essential as a way of bringing in additional funding so the school could stay viable.

Vickey said that word about Knightsen School has gotten out. She had 18 people on a waiting list this year. By early last spring she already had 56 students waiting for an opening next year.

Creating Quality Education
Knightsen School deserves its reputation for quality of education. Parents, for example, are involved with the program to an unusual extent, and remain in touch with what is happening in their children’s classrooms through such things as weekly progress reports, telephone calls, and daily planners.

Children at the Knightsen School cannot tell their parents, “I have no homework.” They cannot even get away with, “I left my work at school.” Parents know that the school stays open until 9 p.m. “Bring the kid over and we’ll get his homework for him,” is what Vickey tells parents.

Knightsen School fosters high expectations for its students, Vickey said, “We expect that students will do well. And they do!”

Vickey adds that one thing she has always appreciated about Knightsen School is that it is a place where she feels she can make a difference. As a teacher, she said that she always believed she could impact the lives of her students, but as Superintendent/Principal she can maintain an attitude, “We’ll get this done no matter what it takes.” And then she has the authority and resources to deliver on the attitude.

Vickey said that a can-do attitude infects all levels of the school. She’s often on campus late into the evenings and often there on the weekends. The teachers are often right there with her. The prevalent attitude in the halls of Knightsen School is, “We’ll do anything to make this place work.”

The school administration reports to a local school board that is composed of members who, like the community itself, provides stability in the midst of a changing environment.

Unbelievably, three of the five school board members that hired Vickey fifteen years ago are still members of the board. “They are great people,” Vickey declares, “who really do put the needs of the kids first.”

Winning Through Team Effort
Knightsen School doesn’t face the situation so common in many school districts in which teachers maintain adversarial relationships with board members. The board is pro-student, pro-teacher, and pro-community. Somehow they figure out ways to make that happen. Their success at this, Vickey thinks, is due to the fundamental concern that everyone has in common, “What is best for our kids?”

The school board doesn’t look for ways to cut corners; instead they find creative ways to support teacher requests.

Vickey said that her little school supports classroom learning in some remarkable ways. For example, teachers are given $300 each per year of purely discretionary funds to spend on anything they need for their classrooms. This is money that comes from lottery funds. The school never uses that money to supplement normal operating or payroll costs, as some school districts do. The staff and school board members all believe that money should be used directly for teachers and students.

Some of the parents at Knightsen School are real activists, Vickey said. One of them, Mary Ann Reinmuth, for example, became concerned about the WW II-era playground equipment. One day she came to Vickey. “Let’s work on getting funding for new equipment,” she said.

Vickey and Mary Ann wrote grant applications together and were able to secure grants for $65,000, which was almost seventy percent of the total cost for the playground makeover.

Professionals installed the equipment, but a determined team of parents put in a lot of “sweat equity,” carrying out such tasks as putting down the webbing and wood chips.

The project was finished two weeks before school started. The first day of school that year was a great time as the children got their first look at their new playground.

The bus drivers later reported that as they drove up to the gate a dead silence fell over the bus. Suddenly there were gasps and then the kids erupted in delighted shouting and hollering. They leaped off the bus and went running to the playground.

It was a great day! One little boy threw his arms around Vickey’s waist and exclaimed in delight. “Mrs. Rinehart you are wonderful!”

A Desirable Place to Learn, Grow, and Work
The students really love Knightsen School. There are no problems with graffiti or vandalism. “Students have a sense of pride and even of ownership,” Vickey said. “That makes a big difference in a lot of ways.”

It is common for out-of-district parents to bring their children to the school for some extracurricular activity, like Pony League games. After they are on campus a few times they get tuned in to the spirit of the place, and end up asking if they can get their children transferred in.

Vickey said the school attracts good staff as well as students. Three years ago she hired an instructional aide years ago who got excited about classroom education. The aide went on to finish her degree and then completed her credentials. “She was fabulous!” Vickey said.

As soon as the former aide finished her education, she came right back to Knightsen School to teach. “When people come here they want to stay,” Vickey said. “They all have the same experience I had myself. They all think like me, ‘Where else would I ever want to go?’”

Nobody at the school, she said, whether faculty or staff, feels like a cog in some machine. Instead they feel as though they are vital components of a wonderful organism. Nobody is ever bored! “We attract people who are eager to try new things,” Vickey said, “and then we give them a chance to do so.”

“I’m in Charge of That”
Knightsen School has about 28 teachers with a total staff of 54 employees. After fifteen years on the job, Vickey said that she’s the hiring principal for every teacher currently teaching at the school.

As both Principal and Superintendent, Vickey is typical in wearing a number of hats. When you have a job like Vickey’s in a place like Knightsen School, you are forced to do everything from defining processes for instructional improvement to trying to figure out why the school bus won’t start again.

Does the school need to write a grant to get some money for the music program? Guess who has to teach herself how to write a grant and then write the thing.

Does a piece of AV equipment need batteries? Guess who is going to get the batteries and then figure out how to install them?

Vickey said that Knightsen School is a bad place to be if you like getting into a routine and staying there. She said that her job would be a lousy one for anyone who didn’t like excitement.

The situation is even more complicated for the person right under her, who is Vice Principal, as well as Resource Specialist, Special Ed Director, and Technology Coordinator.

“The school’s Payroll Administrator also serves as our Personnel Director, Transportation Director, and Bus Driver,” Vickey said with a laugh.

Another teacher is serving as the resident specialist in Curriculum Development, Staff Development, and Testing. “She’s like my right hand,” Vickey said. Then she added, “Lynn Gursky can do anything.”

“All of the personnel in the school are working too hard,” Vickey added. But then she said, “We’re having too much fun to worry about it. This place is Santa’s Workshop, and it always feels like Christmas Eve!”

Working Against Undesirable Change
One big problem with modern education, in Vickey’s opinion, lies in the tension involved in making choices between effectiveness and efficiency. The bureaucrats make serious errors, in her opinion, by planning growth solely on issues of money.

Economy of scale, for example, means that you can build a single enormous school for less cost than building two smaller ones.

However, the educational environment in a school with 700 pupils is far different than in a school with 1,400 students. In a smaller school it is easier to provide a learning environment where children feel safe, and where they feel they have opportunities to internalize learning, and to be held accountable for whether or not they are taking advantage of the opportunities they are being given.

When a student is only one face in a large sea of faces, the opportunity for this internalized kind of learning declines. The main responsibility, in that case, falls upon the shoulders of the parents who may or may not be equipped or even willing to assume that burden.

A smaller school, like Knightsen School, can provide an educationally excellent environment because nobody is ever simply a face in the crowd. Some of the larger schools have been trying to imitate this by personalizing the experience through such things as dividing up the student body into semi-autonomous sub-groups, each trying to establish its own identify in the minds of the students and faculty.

The smarter approach, in Vickey’s opinion, is simply to build schools small enough so that administrators are able to control the learning environment, implement sensible discipline measures, monitor students’ progress, and communicate effectively with parents.

In other words, she advocates making schools small enough so that connections can be made among all the parties involved and communication can be established that can draw the diverse pieces of the education experience together into a sound educational whole.

In a smaller school, Vickey said, you are able to carry out discipline more effectively than in a large one. For one thing, you can learn about emerging problems sooner and can nip some situations in the bud that in larger schools would have gone unnoticed until they developed into large, ugly troubles.

Students feel embraced by the happy environment that Knightsen School creates and are given sufficient psychological space in which they are free to grow into their potentials and to be themselves.

A Painless Solution to Financial Short-falls
Vickey admits that it is impossible to make a compelling case for the kind of education she is describing based solely on finances. However, she believes that our educational dollars would be better spent on systems that have a better chance of adequately preparing people to assume the roles of family members and citizens to the healthy levels that our society desperately needs.

Vickey offers what she said would be a perfect solution to the problems of under-funding for schools. She suggests that we should seek additional money from people who attend sporting events, concerts, and the theater.

“If you tacked two dollars onto every entertainment ticket sold and directed the money into an education fund,” she said, “people wouldn’t perceive it as a tax. Only people who could afford it would be paying this fee.”

Vickey said that her plan should make people feel good about helping support education. And even if it doesn’t make them feel good, she pointed out that there is no real difference between paying $42 and $44 to see the Giants play L.A. or any extra pain imposed by paying $148 rather than $150 to hear Sting sing “An Englishman in New York.”

At any rate, she also points out that the small extra fee would sink into obscurity when compared with the truly obscene seven bucks that Ticket Masters imposes on a helpless public.

Negotiating for Success
An important part of being successful when working in an educational context is to be very straightforward with people. As a result, Vickey said, “I’m always fair. I’m as honest as I can be.”

In particular, Vickey intends always to follow through on things. “It is deadly to fail at this point,” she said, “because kids pick up on that right away.” When Vickey says, “I need you to stop talking,” everyone knows that she really needs it. She will not accept half-hearted compliance.

It is also true that when students hear Vickey say, “If you do so-and-so, I will give you such-and-such,” they can depend upon her to do what she said. When she gives rewards for changed behavior in this way, she said, the children really get excited about it and work hard for it.

For example, a child was transferred into Knightsen School who was classified as “emotionally-disturbed.” She took him aside, looked at him intently with both her eyes, she said, and said to him, “You have to control your behavior for six weeks. If you do this, I’ll buy you lunch.”

“That was really great!” she said. And when the student kept his part of the bargain, she didn’t just buy him McDonalds; the two of them actually drove to Concord and had lunch together. Vickey remembers on the ride home that the student asked with a big smile on his face, “If I control my behavior again, can we have lunch again?” The child knew that he could count on her keeping her word.

Tuff Gal
Vickey said that she’s acquired a reputation for being tough. A group of gang members, calling themselves The Monkeys, moved into Knightsen a few years ago and tried to recruit her kids into drugs and to pick up underage girls for sex.

One of the Knightsen residents complained to the sheriff in Martinez, showing him a newsletter article Vickey had written on the subject.

“What school did you say that was?” the sheriff asked. “Knightsen? Well, no problem then. They have a superintendent over there that can kick the sorry butts of those punks!”

That really made Vickey laugh when she heard the story. However, she admitted to me that if she had ever caught one of those guys in the act of pushing stuff on one of her kids or trying to pick up one of her girls, she would have made him wish he had tried that someplace else.

“I can stand up and spit in somebody’s eye if it is necessary to do so,” she said. But then added, “Most cases call for tact rather than tough.” Vickey told a great story to illustrate her point.

“A woman once called me who was really furious at the school. She thought that the work for her child hadn’t been modified sufficiently to accommodate problems that he was having. She told me she was going to sue us for every penny we had and would end up owning the school.”

“When she said that, I told the woman, ‘You don’t have to sue us. Come down here and I’ll give you the key to the school myself’ She laughed at that, of course, and we ended up working things out in a very amicable manner.”

Where to from Here?
Vickey is planning to retire next year. However, she also plans to apply to the board for the position of part-time Superintendent. If they agree to that, then they can hire a fulltime principal.

During the next five years Vickey said she would love to oversee a project to build a new school — either another K-8 school or a K-4 school and then convert the present facility to a 5-8 school.

It sounds to me like Vickey will probably be more active in her “part-time retirement” than most people are working a full-time job — or two, perhaps. Knightsen School is the little school that could in part because it is managed by a person who apparently doesn’t know the meaning of “can’t.”