Editor’s Note: This will be a monthly commentary piece as Kris Hill works with the Kentlake High School Site Council as part of its efforts to change how students learn there.

In August I sat down with Joe Potts, the new principal at Kentlake High, as part of a story I was writing about new principals in Covington area schools — he is one of four new principals this year.

Potts and I talked about how he got into education, his experience, where he’s been, what his philosophies are and where he thinks Kentlake can go in the future.

I first met him in August 2009 when I wrote a story about Kentwood’s Jump Start program, an extended freshman orientation that was intended to help create greater connection for those students as they made the transition from middle to high school.

When I discovered he was moving into the spot vacated by Diana Pratt, whom I had known for years, I was relieved. It’s always good to know the people you’ll be working with on a regular basis. I have tried to establish professional relationships with the principals at the schools in Covington because it’s important to have a direct connection in the building and no one, in theory, knows more about what’s going on at a school than its principal.

At the end of the interview before the start of this school year, I asked Potts if there was anything else I needed to know before I headed out. I don’t recall if he answered the question, I’m sure he did, but he then said to me, “I have a question for you.”

Usually this prefaces a question about deadlines or other procedural bits and bobs that people want to know about the paper so they know when to contact me about a story idea or event.

Instead, Potts asked if I would be interested in being a part of a new school site council he was forming, with the intent for it to be part of Kentlake’s school improvement plan.

He explained who he was planning to invite, what the goal would be, and I agreed to be a part of it. During this discussion, I told Potts that what I saw on paper about Kentlake did not match what I knew of the school, and he said that he had heard good things about the staff while at Kentwood.

“I understood that the school had enormous capacity in terms of achievement, that interested me, it had a talented staff and it had room for improvement,” Potts told me in August. “I saw in the school and in the opening an opportunity to contribute and maybe take the school to another level in terms of its ability to connect and integrate with the community and to provide the students with a world class education.”

In a discussion I had with Potts on Monday, he further explained why he decided to form the site council, pointing to the idea that it’s important the school be connected to the community, to city government, to businesses, because we all have a stake in its success.

“In order to get better, we have to get different,” Potts said. “The site council is a change agent. I’m not at all interested in excuses. I’m interested in solutions. That’s part of what I want from the site council — ideas.”

There are many things that need to be evaluated and areas that need change.

For three years, Kentlake has been working to get more of its students to meet standard, in other words to pass whatever state mandated test they were using at the time, be it the Washington Assessment of Student Learning or now the High School Proficiency Exam.

In 2007, three of the Kent School District’s high schools — Kentwood, Kentlake and Kent-Meridian — were on the list of buildings in the state that “needed improvement.”

I’m not sure what happened at Kent-Meridian, but, I believe Kentwood got off the list. This, according to a story I wrote in 2007, is part of the mandate of the federal No Child Left Behind Act which requires that the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction monitor a variety of categories for districts and schools. If they don’t “meet standard” as educators say, then they land on a list, which starts with a school or a district being put on “alert” status then moving up to the “Needs Improvement” list and then you move into a step process.

There are five steps, each with varying and increasingly more aggressive actions needed to be taken to get off the list. After six straight years of not making adequate yearly progress, Kentlake is on Step Five, which Potts said, is “not an acceptable place for this school to be.”

In order to get out of the educational dog house, so to speak, schools must make adequate yearly progress and as Bob Isenberg, who was in charge of testing for the school district in 2007, told me then that there are targets for five ethnic groups, three program groups, special needs students, those in the English Language Learner Program and children who receive free or reduced price lunches.

That first year that Kentlake was on the improvement list, I thought, “OK, this is something Kentwood and K-M are experiencing, as well, so part of this is due to the size of the schools, part of it is due to diversity, part of it has to do with changing curriculum and approaches to teaching to help kids pass a high stakes test.”

So, in 2007, I just chalked it up to extenuating circumstances.

But, Kentlake continued to struggle to do the things it’s supposed to do to get more kids to pass the tests, though there were some noticeable gains on the HSPE this past spring.

I’ve wondered for the past couple of years why this could be. I’ve talked to a fair number of students and teachers —usually through sports coverage the past 18 months — and the teachers seem to be bright, hardworking people who genuinely care about teaching kids what they need to know to do well in life. The students seemed articulate, engaged and interested in learning.

But, after the first Kentlake Site Council Meeting, I’ve realized students there for whatever reason are not performing to their potential.

On Oct. 13, I went over to Kentlake, a Wednesday night. I left the office at 5:30 after getting here before 9 a.m. to help lay out the paper. I knew it was important but, man, I was dragging tail when I got to the high school.

Once we were settled in at tables in the library, Potts told us why we were there, what he hoped we could accomplish and what the plan was for the day. I think. He gave us a pop quiz, er, I mean exit slip at the end of the meeting to see what we had gotten out of the meeting. It had five questions. I answered four. Typical test anxiety.

This group has two Covington City Council members on it, parents, teachers, school district representatives, a student… and me. Frankly, I felt like the one who didn’t fit in, but I hoped that I brought a useful perspective to things. I guess we shall see.

He showed us a video about kids and technology, how students learn, how to engage them, with some statistics.

The message I recall most distinctly from the video is that kids and adults, particularly teachers, are in a completely different place when it comes to technology.

This sentence, written on mini white boards held up by kids in the video, jumped out at me:

“My parents e-mail. I text, instant message, blog…”

After the video he handed out a packet of data. Potts said our meetings and discussions will be driven in large part by data.

While I am not strong in math, I do love data, because I’m a nerd like that. But, data is telling, even when it may be skewed or inaccurate. When it is collected in a scientific, empirical manner it can often tell you more than anything else short of spending a great deal of time in the classrooms and hallways of Kentlake.

The first page of data was a school climate survey taken by 1,082 students in the spring — there were just over 1,900 students at Kentlake last school year — which asked questions about perceptions of teacher expectations, availability, relevance of school work to the real world and the future, a sense of safety and respectfulness among the student population and so on.

When I looked at these numbers, which Potts said was the second piece of data he received about the school after he took the job over the summer, two things sprang to mind.

Students at Kentlake feel disengaged and disconnected from their teachers as well as from one another. Luckily, they care about their grades, many wanted to do well in school and more than 80 percent felt they had a strong grasp of what they were expected to learn.

As we reviewed the data individually, we were asked to find three positives and three challenges, as well as write down questions we had and suggestions we may have.

I’ve been covering the Kent School District for seven and a half years and the Tahoma School District for five years. I’ve been a journalist, working professionally that is, for a decade. I’ve also worked in Las Vegas and Henderson, Nevada. I grew up in Bellevue. Those are my points of reference when looking at school performance.

After the meeting ended, on time as Potts said he is not a big fan of long meetings, hurray, I went home. My brain was buzzing from the stats, the discussion, the big picture context I was trying to put this all into plus I was hungry and exhausted from a really long day.

I had trouble falling asleep that night. My husband left for work early the next morning and when he left I had trouble going back to sleep because my brain was still buzzing.

We meet again in November. I can’t wait. This will be a fascinating process.

At the meeting a parent remarked that Kentlake already seems different and another parent I spoke to on the phone about an unrelated matter on Thursday said the same thing and attributed it to Potts.

Something I hear discussed often when writing and reading about failing businesses is the idea of a “corporate culture.” The words stifling, negative or unpleasant often are associated with failing businesses.

In August, Potts didn’t know much about the culture at Kentlake, the general approach taken to teaching, to learning, but I think by now not only has he figured it out, he’s made changes to it.

“We started from the very first day to raise expectations… in terms of academics and behavior,” Potts said.

The principal added that teachers and administrators were out in the halls on the first day of school as students arrived, asking them to remove their hats, to take out the earbuds to their iPods, and so on to set the tone.

And like a new CEO, Potts is working on a 30/60/90 plan for Kentlake, the goals he wants to accomplish in 30, 60 and 90 days, the things that need to be done to lay a foundation for success at Kentlake.

By being a part of this site council, I hope to contribute to that, as well but more than anything I am looking forward to observing. I’m a reporter and it’s what I do. Hopefully it will be educational for you and I over the course of the process.

Perhaps we’ll witness together the transformation of a school. That’s what Potts wants to do, transform Kentlake into what it should be someday.