08 April 2009 JUMPED by Rita Williams-Garcia, Harper Teen, March 2009, 167p., ISBN: 978-0-06-076091-5

Dominique:

"I'm just a baller. A guard. A floor general running the show. Making plays happen on the court. That's from having eyes on the court; seeing where to be; beating the ball for the steal; reading the D; getting the ball in the hot hands; charging into the paint or taking a charge; shooting from the high post. "All I have to do is make him understand that I need my minutes. My ball time while I can still get it. I'm not dumb. This is it. This and Fourth Street is what I got. I have to fight grown men just to be picked to play. They be knocking me down just to make me sit down. Ride the bench. Know my place. So this team is all the shot I get. I'm done once I'm out. So this can't come down to five points in science. This isn't 'Do better next time, Dominique.' This is 'Fix it now.'"

Leticia:

"When you're the outsider, you should know your situation. Know who you are and when you step out. Know what you can and can't do. Know whose face you can be in and whose jokes you can laugh at. You should know whose man belongs to who, and even if he's on his own, you should know where he was before you came skipping along. You can't just arrive on the scene and be jumping in everyone's face. You gotta know where to step and how."

Trina:

"No one had used a word like that for me. Aptitude. She didn't have to explain it. I got it. I have the habilidad. I am apt to make beauty and color. "'Look at this brochure. This is your new school.' Her last few words played like music. She said, 'They have an art program.'"

For generations there have been drama and bullying and violence in middle schools and high schools. What is the big deal? Hormones clash; problems at home fester and percolate; and prejudices -- whether innate, or picked up from parents and friends -- are acted upon. The weak get preyed on by the powerful, the minority are put in their place by the majority. It's nothing that doesn't happen in the rest of the real world every day, so why should middle school or high school be any different? Sure, sometimes there is some big ugly deal like a school shooting. That is regrettable, but what can you do? Even if school district budgets were all magically increased in order to try and "solve" the problems leading up to such incidents, there would still be an occasional kid who goes wacko. If we forgo spending hundreds of billions of dollars in such a manner when there is only a one-in-ten-thousand chance that my child's school will be involved or a one-in-a-million chance that my kid will get shot (or be a shooter), then isn't that money well saved...even if it means accepting the occasional tragedy in somebody else's school district?

...Or are schools actually the place to invest more money in order to help create the sort of adults who can turn the world around in unimaginably wonderful ways?

A number of years ago, the school board for our K-8 district decided to stop funding a Vice Principal position (a.k.a. The Enforcer) at our middle school and, instead, fund a full-time school counseling position. Here are bits of our Counselor's profile page:

"Children in school today are arriving with a full array of troubled lives. Many children need the support of a mentor adult to be able to focus on school... "I am available daily to students and parents. My goal is to call each student by name and get to know them academically, socially, and personally while they are [here]. The end of the school year is always bittersweet for me as I have grown quite fond of the graduating class and it is painful to send them on their way... "I am out on the yard daily at lunch and in and out of classrooms all day. I want to be visible and easily accessible to students. I am available to help sort out the big issues in life as well as the little things that can really get a person down on any given day. The role of school counselor is to guide through the little things and know when students need more help. If and when that time comes, I talk to the child about more help and gain his or her permission to talk with a parent about professional counseling. We are also fortunate to have ten hours a week of time from [a professional MFT] so children with limited resources can receive counseling services on campus."

I think about this, because it is so frustrating to follow Dominique, Leticia, and Trina through the single day in which JUMPED takes place. There is no inherently "bad guy" amongst this trio. But their school -- like so many US schools -- is, for far too many students, a place of frustration and trashed dreams and dead ends. There is not one adult with authority who really gets what is going on.

On one level, JUMPED is a very simple story that will quickly suck readers in: Dominique is totally pissed off because she is no longer permitted game time -- as per the coach's rules -- after receiving a 70 on her report card. Cute and artsy Trina, prancing along in her pink sweat outfit before school, unwittingly disrespects Dominique's space in the hallway and so Dominique announces to her sidekicks that she is going to jump Trina at 2:45. Leticia is the only witness to the early-morning incident and when she phones her best friend Bea to tell her about it, Bea insists that Leticia get involved to prevent it or at least warn Trina. Leticia, whose Zero Period math tutorial is the beginning of a particularly agonizing school day of endless frustrations, contemplates whether or not to actually get involved.

Just as you begin getting seduced by the reasonableness of the rules under which Dominique is straining, you begin to see hints of the unreasonableness of the education system at play here. It is epitomized by a scene in which Leticia, who has previously completed Spanish I and Spanish II, is unsuccessfully attempting to persuade her guidance counselor to get her out of the French I class in which she was placed (because the Spanish classes are overflowing), and into Spanish III.

That there is no adult in whom Leticia can place any trust is, arguably, the root of the impending tragedy. That there is no adult in whom Leticia can place any trust is one more example of the ongoing failure of education in America.

Sure, this sort of dehumanizing situation is less likely to take place in my district's middle school. Our counselor does a truly stellar job, knows and interacts sincerely with every single student in the school, is familiar with the families of all of those students, and is always visible, accessible, and approachable.

But meeting all of a school district's needs under public education's current funding mechanism is like trying to stay warm in bed under a blanket built for Barbie.

I have plenty of first-hand knowledge of how Leticia's wry observations about the lack of janitorial service at her high school is not only a symptom of large urban schools. Thirty-one years after California's Prop. 13 began systematically gutting educational funding to the 12% of US students who live here, our middle school campus and classrooms are maintained at an appalling level of cleanliness that was unimaginable in my own school years. That Barbie blanket don't cover very much in custodial services.

Nor does it cover purchases of new books for the middle school library which is staffed only a few hours per week.

JUMPED is an intense and intimate look into a day in the life of three high school students who are set on a collision course and at the decisions adolescents make or avoid that can so irrevocably change everything.

But -- as some readers will come to realize -- the choices adolescents make or forgo are so often built upon the value (or lack thereof) that society places upon teaching our children well.

Richie Partington, MLIS

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