New principal works to create a place of learning
Around 7 a.m., when the first school buses roll in, Phillip K. Woods starts his day.
He arrives shortly before the students do, and stations himself outside of Woodland Hills Junior/Senior High School to greet them. He welcomes the throng of students as they line up at the school’s front door and make their way through the metal detectors. A few weeks into the school year, he is starting to learn their names.
The school board hired Mr. Woods, 42, over the summer to lead the turnaround efforts at the high school, which has struggled with achievement, attendance and discipline. His first task — and one he sees as a steppingstone to accomplishing everything else he’s been charged with — is making sure everyone is where they’re supposed to be.
Walkie-talkie in hand, he waves at the incoming bus drivers to pull all the way through to the end of the drop-off lane so more can pull in behind. (Congestion was a problem during the first week of school, he said). After the last bus leaves, he heads back inside to do a lap of the school, encouraging students to get their breakfast, take out their earbuds and get to class.
By 7:25, he’s back at the main office to give his morning announcement. “Have a great day,” his voice echoes over the school speakers. “Be prompt, be prepared and be productive in everything you do.”
“We need to deal with the environment first before going into the classrooms,” he said later, after stepping into an early-morning disciplinary meeting with a student and her mother and then setting to work on a blue folder stuffed with budget forms, field trip requests and student parking permits that all require his signature.
Since Mr. Woods started in July, and just one month into the 2018-19 school year, district leaders say they have received positive reports from parents, students and staff about his work thus far. There have been fewer fights and less chaos in the hallways, board members said.
“Now when I go there, it’s almost like the school is closed,” said board member David Graves. “There’s no one in the hallways, it’s very quiet. All the chaos, just in that time frame, is not there, which means students are back in the classroom and they’re learning.”
District leadership has high expectations for Mr. Woods, who previously worked for seven years in the same role at West Mifflin Area High School. Administrators — and frustrated parents across the 12 communities that make up the Woodland Hills district — want to see better academic performance and more discipline with fewer suspensions and arrests. Students and staff at the school are still reeling from the loss of a half dozenstudents to gun violence over the past two years, including the death of recent Woodland Hills graduate Antwon Rose II, who was shot and killed by an East Pittsburgh police officer during a traffic stop in June.
Mr. Woods took over control of the school from Candee Nagy, who served in the interim after the last principal, Kevin Murray, resigned in 2017 amid controversy over alleged physical mistreatment of students.
“It sounds cliche, but his experience and what he had done in his previous job was pretty solid,” said school board Vice President Mike Belmonte. “And with that track record, we felt confident that he had the wherewithal to help.”
“He’s a very charismatic person, I think,” said school board President Jamie Glasser. “He’s engaging, he’s a leader.”
Before he was hired in West Mifflin, Mr. Woods was a special education teacher and later an elementary school assistant principal and principal in the Penn Hills School District.
His consulting firm, P.W. Diversity and Equity Resources, was contracted last year by the Gateway School District to run a pilot program aimed at reducing the racial achievement gap in that district. Mr. Woods has a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, a master’s degree and principal’s certificate from Slippery Rock University, and a doctorate in educational administration and leadership from IUP.
Mr. Woods grew up in Aliquippa in Beaver County, a community that struggles in much the same way as some neighborhoods within Woodland Hills. That experience helps him empathize with some of the challenges his 1,500 students face, and helps give him perspective as he works to improve the culture and clamp down on bad behavior so the students can focus on being successful in school. His ability to relate with the students was appealing to the board when it was reviewing candidates, Mr. Graves said.
“I’ve been through it all,” Mr. Woods said. “When we [were] growing up, we fought. They’re killing people now. They’re killing people. My goal is to get the victim or the aggressor, to say ‘Hey, it ain’t that serious.’
“It’s deep, it’s serious work,” he said.
On a Wednesday in midSeptember, Mr. Woods spent about 10 minutes at his desk signing forms and answering emails before hitting the hallways again at the end of the first period. He stopped in the auditorium, dubbed the “late room” in the morning, where a dozen students who showed up late and after 7:30 were waiting for the next bell. School administrators don’t want students who show up more than 10 minutes late disrupting their classmates, so they wait there, Mr. Woods said.
When the bell rings, he positions himself in the hallways.
“The more visible we are the more we can deter some of this nonsense,” he said.
Security guards, assistant principals, behavioral specialists and teachers are constantly monitoring the traffic in the hallways and urging the students to move along to their class or lunch room.
Around noon — when the oldest students head to lunch — is the most tedious point of Mr. Woods’ day, he said. He parks himself at a hallway intersection near the library that he dubbed the “hot spot,” making sure no one is dawdling and blocking the flow. Faculty members and school resource officers keep close watch for trouble in the cafeteria, too.
But despite the disciplinary hearings and the hallway surveillance, most of Mr. Woods’ day resembles that of any other high school principal anywhere.
Mr. Woods has a principal’s knack for spotting a student using his or her cellphone when they shouldn’t be. He fielded a call from the principal of the private Pace School next door — some Woodland Hills students apparently thought they could park their cars in that lot rather than buy a parking permit. After a student’s sister called pretending to be his mom and asking that he be dismissed early for the day, Mr. Woods instructed the main office staff to send the boy directly