Decision Makes School Chief Hated; Loved

Central Falls, Rhode Island (CNN) -- Superintendent Frances Gallo combed the classrooms of embattled Central Falls High School. Teachers and students were gone for the day. Gallo was hunting for a particular item: an effigy of President Obama.

She hoped the rumor of its existence wasn't true.

Gallo had fired all the high school teachers just a month earlier, igniting an educational maelstrom in Rhode Island's smallest and poorest community while winning praise from the president.

The teachers union lampooned her; hate mail flooded her inbox. For weeks, she'd prayed every morning for the soul of the man who wrote: "I wish cancer on your children and their children and that you live long enough to see them die."

It was one thing to take barbs from opponents -- another thing altogether if the division was infecting classrooms. Teachers assured the superintendent that the school battle wasn't seeping into lesson plans. So, when CNN asked her about the rumor of the effigy, Gallo took it upon herself to get to the bottom of it.

She entered the school in the dark of night Monday. She started her room-to-room sweep on the first floor. The first was clean, then the next and the next.

Yet newspaper headlines about the controversy, Gallo says, were plastered nearly everywhere. What are the teachers doing? she thought.

Most were local papers with banner headlines: "Teachers fired." Others highlighted Obama's support of Gallo, an endorsement that turned an already tense situation into a firestorm.


In this Democratic stronghold, teachers wondered: How could the president they supported turn his back on them? Some peeled Obama bumper stickers off their cars.

Gallo knew Obama's endorsement would create further uproar. She just didn't know how bad it would get.

She continued making her way through the school, clearing the first two floors. She was disheartened by the newspaper postings but relieved she hadn't found the offensive item.

One floor to go.

She climbed the steps and entered a classroom.

There it was.

"You couldn't miss it."

An Obama doll, about a foot tall, hung by its feet from the white board; the doll held a sign that said, "Fire Central Falls teachers," she says.

Recounting her discovery later, Gallo broke down in tears. A flood of emotions poured out, the raw toll of all that has transpired in recent weeks.

When she confronted the teacher responsible, she says he responded that it was "a joke to him."

The teachers, she says, have "no idea the harm they're doing." She thought of Obama's words: Students get only one shot at an education.

"I've tried to explain this over and over again: The children here are very disturbed by the actions of their teachers, and they're torn apart because they also love them."

It's lonely being a voice for change.

'Miracles Happen Everyday'

Central Falls is a town of more than 18,000 people -- most of them Hispanic immigrants -- living within 1.5 square miles. "Ripley's Believe It Or Not" once dubbed the town, about 10 minutes from Providence, the most densely populated in the nation.

The school is an ornate brick building with decorative columns. A housing project backs up to the campus. A marquee outside the school reads: "Daily reflection on your efforts and outcomes will improve both."

Just a few blocks away, Gallo works from a modest building that looks as if it were once a home. A wall in the superintendent's office is decorated with Central Falls High T-shirts. "Don't talk trash ... recycle it," one says.

Above her door is a sign: "Miracles Happen Everyday." It keeps her grounded, she says, reminding her that "my kids are going to learn."

Gallo arrived in Central Falls in 2007, knowing a tough job loomed ahead. The school had already been designated one of the lowest-performing in Rhode Island.

"I have never once looked away from a challenge or put children second," she says.

The school has been failing for the last seven years. Its graduation rate stands around 48 percent. Math proficiency is a paltry 7 percent. Reading scores have improved by 21 percentage points in the last two years, but still lag far behind with 55 percent able to read at grade level, according to school officials.

Like the town's population, most of the 800 students at Central Falls are Hispanic. For many, English is a second language. Teachers say the population is so transient, the statistics are skewed: Dozens of students enroll as freshmen but move before their senior year. Those students get counted in the low graduation rate.

It's a difficult environment in which to teach, teachers say, and they do their best. Gallo says union contracts, or "scar tissue," are so thick and dense that instituting reform is difficult.

Gallo says she didn't want to take the drastic measure of firing all 93 teachers, support staff and administrators. Yet her decision to do so instantly made her one of the boldest school administrators in the nation -- loathed and loved, reviled and applauded.

"I never anticipated this. Never," Gallo says.

On the wall behind her desk is a framed quotation: "Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, 'I will try again tomorrow.' "