A matter of principal
Ten years ago, the shooting of Jordan Manners tore apart C.W. Jefferys high school and shocked the city. Today, it is one of the most improved schools in the GTA — thanks largely to one man
A chipper adult is the last person most teenagers want to deal with first thing in the morning.
But at 8:45 a.m. on a Tuesday, it’s hard for even the most bleary-eyed students walking through the front doors of C.W. Jefferys Collegiate to resist principal Monday Gala’s apparent excitement that yet another school day is about to begin. “Good morning, ladies! How are you today?” “How are you feeling, son?” Gala knows most by name. Sara. Jamal, Alvin. The lanky boys with earbuds and ballcaps, and the chattering clusters of girls with bulging knapsacks.
Dapper in a grey linen suit, pink shirt and bright blue tie, he’s already put in an hour of paperwork this morning so he can turn his attention to what he loves best — face time with the kids streaming in the front doors.
Gala stands by a table laden with oranges, bananas and apples, neatly stacked cartons of milk and a giant pan of freshly baked banana bread. He chats with Imelda from the cafeteria as she dishes out the food. He trades jokes with the guidance teacher dashing to her office.
The school’s breakfast program serves 425 of the school’s 730 students and is offered casually on the way in, without singling anyone out or requiring a trip to the cafeteria.
His animated presence provokes slow grins and a refrain of “Morning sir, how are you?” He responds with a thumbs-up. “I’m tops!” These days, there’s reason to feel upbeat about the high school at Jane and Finch in northwest Toronto, which has seen some dark days. Ten years ago this month, the school gained notoriety as the site of the first shooting death in a Toronto school after 15-year-old Jordan Manners died in a stairwell.
The tragedy shook the school, the community and the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), and led to a task force on school safety, a raft of changes in safety measures, and badly needed funds and programs to support Jefferys students. Some in the community feared the school name would forever be tarnished by images of guns and violence.
But in the last few years, Jefferys has begun to make headlines of a different sort. Under Gala, who joined the staff as a physics and math teacher in 2000, became vice-principal in 2007 and principal in 2012, it became the first school in Toronto to stop the controversial practice of streaming Grade 9 and 10 students into applied-level instead of academic courses.
He was among a handful of people to receive a TDSB award of excellence last year.
Then in February came more good news. Jefferys earned the title of fastest improving school in the GTA in the widely watched Fraser Institute annual rankings, based on standardized test scores.
And Gala was named one of Canada’s 40 outstanding principals by the non-profit education group The Learning Partnership. The honour followed an extensive process of nominations and testimonials from students, parents, educators and the community.
Accolades are nice, says Gala, 56, who claims “I have the best job in the world.”
The more important rewards come in the increasing number of Grade 9 students choosing Jefferys, and the fact that postsecondary applications have been steadily increasing over the past few years. The impact of positive news isn’t lost on C.W. Jefferys students. “We don’t want to be known as the school where the student got shot,” Grade 11 student council member Ali Azhar says. “We want to be known as the school that’s most improved and has one of the best principals in the country.”
On a typical day at 9:05, Gala is marching through Jefferys’ pristine hallways, making it his business to know what’s going on in every corner. He greets kids and rounds up stragglers.
“You’re not spending too much time, but you’re connecting on a level that says ‘I care,’ ” he explains.
“Hey, where should you be?” he calls to a couple of boys. “You’re making me look bad.” They hustle off to class.
He runs into a Grade 10 student he promised to help with math and reminds her to have the office summon him on his walkietalkie when she comes for a lesson.
A principal who tutors? “You have to make the time,” he explains.
That time pays off. “If you ask me the name of every kid, I’ll struggle, but there’s not a kid in this school I don’t recognize.”
If he encounters a group, he’ll point at each person, saying “you’re mine and you’re mine and you’re not. So what is your business in my school?”
When kids are in the hallway unsupervised, “that’s when trouble happens,” he says.
He stops to chat with a Grade 9 student who looks overwhelmed. The transition to high school hasn’t been easy for him. Gala reaches up and lays a hand on his shoulder as they talk quietly. Walking away, he makes a mental note to check in with the boy’s special education teacher.
Upstairs, Gala slips unannounced into the Grade 12 calculus class, where 15 students are engrossed in solving problems on a Smart Board.
“Mr. MacCabe, that looks complicated, man,” he says to the teacher.
Classroom visits are a ritual he began as a new principal and weren’t initially welcomed by staff.
“They’d think it was an evaluation. I said ‘no, we want the kids to know we’re excited about their education.’ ”
Azhar, who enlists Gala in planning everything from school movie nights to dances, says the principal is popular because of his warm, funny vibe and because “kids know they can go to him for anything.” But at the same time, “when it’s time to get down to business, that’s what he’ll do.”
Gala was teaching a Grade 10 science class just after 2 p.m. on a Wednesday in the spring of 2007, when the office secretary got word that Jordan Manners had been found face down at the bottom of the stairs outside the gymnasium.
Staff members scrambled to figure out what had happened to the semi-conscious boy in the empty hall, find a firstaid kit and call 911. There was no blood. But when they rolled him over and cut open his shirt, they discovered a small hole in his chest.
He had been shot at close range with a small-calibre weapon.
The horrible scene led to pandemonium on that day, May 23, 2007. Gala remembers the lockdown order coming over the speakers. As police roamed hallways and distraught families gathered outside, he focused on trying to keep everyone calm and quiet with the lights out until it was finally over at 6 p.m.
Days later, two 17-year-old boys were charged. Their trial in 2010 resulted in a hung jury after several key witnesses recanted their testimonies. A year later, both defendants were found not guilty following a second trial.
“It affected me very much, it was bad for everybody,” says Gala, who knew the young student but hadn’t taught him.
Guidance teacher Shannon Zangari was three weeks into maternity leave but recalls the shock and its painful aftermath.
“The whole tone was it’s not safe. It completely annihilated our school.”
A month after the tragedy, the school made news again over the alleged sexual assault of a female student on the premises by a group of boys the previous fall. The principal and other administrative staff were charged with failing to report the incident — they were later dismissed on a technicality — and a new principal and vice-principals were brought in for the next school year.
Jim Spyropoulos, who became principal in September 2007, recalls the turmoil.
Gala had originally been posted to another school that fall but at the last minute was brought back to Jefferys as viceprincipal.
“He was the glue that connected us as an administrative team to the school, because he had the history and the relationships,” Spyropoulos says.
“His greatest strength now, I believe, was his greatest strength then, and that is how incredibly connected he is to his own school community internally, staff, students, I mean everybody.”
From the start as principal, Gala had high expectations for his students and a commitment to helping them see their own potential. He wanted to ensure the transformation that started a few years earlier continued.
Talk to kids, staff or parents and the phrases commonly heard are his “opendoor policy” and philosophy of no student left behind.
“When you believe in somebody, it changes them,” says Zangari, who started as a Jefferys teacher in 2000, the year Gala joined the staff.
That defining principle was also at the root of Gala’s decision to start dismantling academic streaming in September 2014, even though about half the staff didn’t support the idea.
The high-priority neighbourhood at Jane and Finch is among the most culturally diverse in the city, with a high population of newcomers and single parents, many living in subsidized housing. Graduation rates are low.
Gala had noted that kids from poorer families and racially marginalized groups were overrepresented in applied classes, as opposed to the university-bound academic ones.
He also knew kids in applied courses were less likely to graduate on time and only one of five likely to attend postsecondary school.
He was determined to change that trajectory.
Today at Jefferys, all Grade 9 students take academic-level geography, English, science and French, and those in Grade 10 take academic history, English and science. About half a dozen other schools followed suit.
“Who would think a school at Jane and Finch would dare do this?” Gala says. “But you cannot argue with the results we’ve got.”
Pass rates of students in the new inclusive academic classes were immediately higher than they had been for kids in past applied classes. Today the pass rate is more than 95 per cent in all those courses.
He credits it with boosting overall success. Between June 2012 and June 2016, the number of Grade 9 students who earned at least eight credits jumped to 83 per cent from 67 per cent, Grade 10 rates rose 16 percentage points to 76 per cent, and Grade 11 jumped 22 points to 77 per cent.
Pass rates in standardized EQAO math tests in Grade 9 and the Grade 10 literacy test have also improved, with math results well above the TDSB average.
As part of the transition, the school organized extra supports. Those included supply teachers hired as academic tutors using provincial funds allotted to urban and priority high schools, and enlisting York University education students and trained Grade 12 mentors to provide additional help. Extra class prep time was allotted for EQAO literacy and math tests. Teachers were available for math help every day after school, and for math and literacy help during lunch.
The process of destreaming math — the last applied course available in Grade 9 — will begin this fall. Kids will be encouraged to enrol in academic and those identified by their middle schools as needing extra support are being offered classes this summer. The goal is to phase out applied over the next year or two.
The destreaming initiative has impact beyond the school, says Ryan Marrast, who grew up in the neighbourhood, graduated from Jefferys in 2000 and is currently teaching careers and helping kids who are behind in school catch up and earn their credits.
The message for kids that they are capable of aiming higher has put the school in