School reform legend prepares to take over wayward John McDonogh High School
Published: Sunday, March 18, 2012, 7:30 AM Updated: Sunday, March 18, 2012, 7:36 AM
Steve Barr, who describes himself as a "basketball freak," stands taller than 6 feet and talks urgently in sports metaphors. The one on his mind now has to do with John McDonogh High School on Esplanade Avenue.
Still haunted by a 2003 shooting, John McDonogh High School languishes, even after six years in the state's turnaround agency, the Recovery School District. RSD officials are under pressure to improve results at the school.Barr's new nonprofit group, Future Is Now Schools, will begin converting the struggling campus into a charter school this summer, and job No. 1 is figuring out how to get his starting lineup in place under the salary cap.
Drawing X's on a chalkboard in a small, dingy office on McDonogh's second floor, Barr says, "Here are the big, high-priced free agents. Math, science, English and reading."
The goal is to find all-stars to teach these subjects and pay them 25 percent more than a traditional public school would, say $70,000 or so.
To Barr, the real problem -- or at least the one he can address -- is not that students at John McDonogh live in poverty, though almost all of them come from families that qualify for free or reduced-priced lunch. Nor is it that they
