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For their part, the teachers criticize the students for skipping class, for disruptive behavior in the halls and for general apathy. They complain that their charges cannot read and write adequately. "They are so poor in basic communication," laments English Department Head Leah Caliri.
Teachers also blame the administration for not giving direction to the school and for lowering standards. "I used to be tough and demanding, but I was told to lay off," confides one teacher. If he fails more than 20% of his students, he says, he is "called on the carpet"—a plaint echoed by other teachers.
But there are those who think the teachers and the teachers' union account for a big chunk of Medford's problems. Faculty salaries, which comprise 88% of the $4.4 million annual budget, are good. Yet the militant Massachusettes Teachers Association staged a 15-month slowdown at Medford between September 1975 and November 1976. Teachers refused to work with students a minute past their scheduled 7:45 am. to 2:15 p.m. day as a protest against what they felt were low salaries, large class size and insufficient job security In the end, they won their salary demands. A tenured teacher with a B.A. now earns $17,357 annually, one with a master's degree 19,825. In previous bargaining, Medford teachers had already won a limit of three evening appearances at the school per year (two for parent-teacher open houses). They are only required to remain 30 minutes after school twice a week to help students. Any supervision of student activities costs Medford extra.
In contrast, McCormack, 62, looks back fondly on his own teaching days, when he voluntarily wrote and directed school plays and put out the yearbook on his own time. "Now a man makes $1,495 a year for doing nothing more than putting out the yearbook,' he says. "I have no complaints today about paying for these services, but I think that something has been lost in the personal relationship."
A headmaster of the old school, down to his gray herringbone suit and rimless glasses, McCormack finds it difficult to keep tabs on his gargantuan school from his office in a converted second-floor storeroom. He blames Medford's problems mostly on the crowding produced when 1,100 freshmen were jammed in with the three upper classes—but not on any lack of spirit. Other principals might give up; not he. A giant blue and white button on his lapel broadcasts his philosophy. It is emblazoned MEDFORD PRIDE.
Coos Bay: The Classroom Blahs
The town of Coos Bay (pop. 14,132) is nestled in the rolling hills of southwest Oregon, 140 miles north of the California border. It bills itself as "one of the world's foremost lumbering centers and its dock area hums day and night with ships loading wood chips for Japan. Otherwise, it is a collection of modest houses, an attractive downtown shopping area and several motels—most of them strung along U.S. 101, the main street. Its nigh school, a Depression-era legacy of the Public Works Administration, sits prominently on a high hill. When the morning fog clears—at 8 a.m., whiteness blankets the town—Marshfield High commands a sweeping view of Coos Bay.
Inside the school, the bell has barely rung when the lights go out