Joe Sandoval spent 31 years in Denver Public Schools doing all kinds of work, but most people still think of him as the longtime principal of North High School.
“You were only there for nine years?” I ask, not certain I heard him correctly.
“Nine years,” he repeats.
It seemed longer than that. Then again, nine years at any Denver public high school is an eternity these days. Since Sandoval left North after the 2000-01 school year, five principals have come and gone. A sixth starts this fall.
Every principal has strengths and weaknesses, supporters and detractors. That’s life and school politics and north Denver. Sandoval was no exception, so yes, if he had it to do over, he would do some things differently. Spend more time in the classroom, for one. Spend more time with master teachers. Spend more time with his principal colleagues who were doing innovative work.
Thirty-one years on the job and what you realize at retirement is no matter how much you’ve learned, you haven’t learned enough.
I find Sandoval cleaning out his office at Manual High School on Monday. He’s jovial, always jovial, but reflective. This last school year, he served as principal of Manual, a school with troubles of its own. He could have retired as a downtown administrator last year, he says, but was glad to finish out in a school. Teacher, administrator, area superintendent, instructional superintendent, he’s done it all.
“The dinosaurs went away and the earth started to cool, and then Joe started working in DPS,” one of his former colleagues declared, laughing, at Sandoval’s retirement gathering last Friday.
I met him about 12 years ago. Sandoval had developed the habit while Skinner Middle School principal of personally rousting students who kept skipping school. Home visits are common during the October count and state standardized testing. But Sandoval went out when no one was looking because the Northside had become his neighborhood. This is where he and his family moved 38 years ago. It’s where his kids went to school. It’s the place his brother, Paul, represented in the state Senate.
As with many teachers and principals who live in the neighborhood where they work, Sandoval believed he was accountable to the community, and it was accountable to him. He wanted no line between school and neighborhood.
I used to watch him joking with students in the halls. He had a rapport with kids I don’t think I’ve ever seen since. He had, still has, an innate understanding of students as people. That’s a gift you have or you don’t, and it extended to his adult relationships.
“One year, I lost five kids to death, in one year,” retired North High art teacher Martha Johnson tells me at Sandoval’s retirement party. “I get to school one morning, and Joe is waiting for me, and he pulls me aside and tells me that two of my favorite kids had died in a car wreck. I said, ‘No, Joe, you’re wrong.’ And he just gave me this bear hug, and I kept saying, ‘No, Joe, you’re wrong,’ and he just hugged me. That, to me, was such an intuitive, gut reaction. He was that kind of leader. Sincere, kind and compassionate.”
If it were up to him alone, Sandoval says, he’d stop the practice of promoting elementary and middle school students from grade to grade when they’re not academically ready. He thinks it a mistake that high schools were stripped of their vocational-ed programs. Should all kids be prepared to do college work?
Yes, he says, and yes, in the bad old days, students, particularly low-income, minority students, were pushed into voc-ed. But the pendulum has swung too far. Same with high-stakes testing, he says. There’s too much “flavor of the month” in education and not enough commitment to programs that are working.
“But I never lose hope,” he says. “Once you lose hope, you don’t have anything.”
He’s looking forward to an extended vacation, and his wife has a long “honey-do” list for him.
But after that, “I’m thinking I might want to teach,” Sandoval says. “What or where, I don’t know. But I’m not done with this yet.”
Tina Griego writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
