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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 5, 1988)
Monday, September 5, 1988/The Battalion/Page 5 Marines We're looking fora few good men and women. Capt. Mahany 77 846-9036/8891 #MSC TOWN HALL concert committee is now accepting NEW MEMBERS APPLICATIONS WILL BE AVAILABLE In the Town Hall Cube located In the MSC Student Programs Office until Thur. Sept 8th. NEW from Hewlett-Packard 'Principal helps fight drug war ALLAS (AP) — His arms were i, driving punch after punch into Toro’s face, but Frank Romero coiild not stop. Finally he had the ^-.oversized gang leader’s shoulders ca yjpifned to the floor in his office. WToro, an eighth-grader, a man- icecdbov, had taken on the principal. In a Ht of strength, Toro had taken the swing. If Toro won, Romero ' would still be the principal. But Tiro and his gang would run L.V. iy... otockard middle school. , BRomero won. He won because sm Jtht i e was no other way. ■Stockard lies far across the Trinity Ri\ ;r from the great glass towers of 0*802401 dowmown Dallas, in west I Hllas, an expanse of projects, ten- * Hents and faded little houses forsa ke! by better times. ^^^■Drugs have invaded schools in all : Neighborhoods, rich and poor. But, in the declining years at Stockard, y^Hy have become an institution, has- e- fctiing a tragic deterioration. Yet theie is success, however limited. uss^iEvery day, violence and despair tug the school back toward the hell rr Romero found when he arrived five years ago. To keep it from falling, to prove to the seventh- and eignth- : grade kids who see no hope that “He’s tough on everybody. He gets what he wants. He’s been through what we’re going through.” — Rene Esqueda Stocksdale Middle School student someone does believe they stand a chance, Romero must win — every day. He has had scalding water slung in his face. He has taken pistols from young men. He has waded into gang fights alone with a stick. Each time he has won. Romero grew up one of 15 chil dren. He was raised in a two-room house and endured the roughest of times. He is not big but rather bear ish with dark, short hair gone silver at 54. His eyes can twinkle and he can laugh. His face can be impassive as a judge when he hears the latest excuse of one of his regular truants. Eighty percent of Stockard’s 1,100 students are Mexican-Americans, the same culture Romero grew up in El Paso. And this is his magic: He can sense unspoken signals and find a way to reach students when every one else has given up. Students know Romero is willing to go to the source of their trouble. He has confronted local mer chants he suspects of selling dope to kids, squared off with brutal fathers, cussed out negligent mothers. For a certain fragile segment of Stockard’s student body, the princi pal is a source of moral support. “He’s tough on everybody,” Rene Esqueda, 14, said. “He gets what he wants. He’s been through what we’re going through.” It is not like adolescents to make it easy, though. Romero said, “Some need a chew ing out. Some need h paddle and you hit ’em hacd. “The bottom line is you don’t let a kid in seventh and eighth grade think he can outsmart you,” he said. He has initiated special tutoring and mentoring programs that iden tify troubled children and help them — programs successful enough to be emulated at 25 other Dallas schools. But it is the violence, the drugs, the poverty — “the basics,” he calls them — that have been Romero’s continuing challenge. Stockard had chewed up seven school administrations in the 10 years before Romero came. After 1983, his first year, Romero was honored as Principal of the Year in the Dallas school district. “They think that I deserve this. I don’t,” he said. They believe you can change things overnight, in a year, but 1 didn’t. “There are probably more kids doing drugs here,” he said, compar ing his school to others. “We may not have made big changes but we got a handle on it. They believe in us. Nobody gets away with squat around here. Before and after school, during classes and in between.Sometimes he carries a walkie-talkie, sometimes his oak paddle. He is never out of touch for very long with a front office that is more like a crisis center. And the students are never out of step when they see him coming. HEWLETT PACKARD HP-28S HP-22S 11C Scientific $46.00 22S $49.95 32S $59.95 15C $64.00 27C $89.95 28S $185.00 12C Financial $64.00 17B $89.00 19B $142.95 September 6-Northgate-8 a.m.-4 p.m. Hewlett Packard Factory Rep. Roy Brezlowski Texas Instruments Factory Rep. John Fairchild Er? 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