Exodus of staff, students pushed Uintah school into failing No Child Left Behind

VERNAL — Sometime next year, West Middle School will become the first Utah school shuttered for failing to meet the federal education standards established under No Child Left Behind.

The path to this ignominious fate is littered with frequent administration changes; a student exodus to better-performing schools; seemingly unsolvable attendance and behavior problems; and claims of racism on a campus that serves mostly Native American students.

The Uintah School Board voted in November to close West after it failed to make adequate yearly progress for the seventh straight year. The board had planned to bus the school's student body 20 miles east to a pair of Vernal schools; however, at a specially called meeting Wednesday night, board members agreed to build a new K-8 school on the site shared by West and Todd Elementary School.

"We're happy with the decision," said Ramalda Guzman, chairwoman of the Ute Tribe Education Board, following the meeting. "We're going to do our best to prove to (the school board) that we have do have a good community and want good things for our students."

Uintah School District curriculum director Leonard Sullivan, during a phone interview with the Deseret Morning News earlier in the day, outlined the challenges the district has faced during the past six years as it tried to raise academic proficiency at West.

Sullivan said West had been tagged as a poor academic performer even before NCLB came along in 2001.

"Pretty much, West had been identified as not making enough progress right from the start of No Child Left Behind," Sullivan said.

In 2001, the district named A.J. Pease as West's principal. He implemented a "reality therapy" program, Sullivan said, that encouraged students to evaluate the outcome of their behavior and how they could change that outcome by making different choices.

At the same time, West had a Title I support provider from the Utah State Office of Education working in the school. There was also funding from a drug-free and violence-free grant.

After two years, Pease left West. He was followed by Bart Stevens, whose tenure also lasted two years. Stevens was followed by Deena Millecam, but she stayed just one year. Millecam was replaced at the start of the 2006-07 school year by current principal, Deborah Clarke.

"We haven't had a principal who didn't ask to leave; who didn't say, 'OK, I'm ready for a different experience now,"' Sullivan said about the administrative turnover.