Dream Makers

How teachers, parents, and a young white principal have taken plans for a Dream School in the Bayview and made them a dream of their own

A A A Comments By Lessley Anderson Wednesday, Mar 9 2005

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The kids, especially the girls, are freezing, but they're also smiling. As the trolley pulls away from Gloria R. Davis, the kids shriek with glee. Some of them were on the honor roll last year, and they certainly never got to do anything like this. Many have never been on a cable car, motorized or not.

Livingston promises the shivering students that they'll stop for lunch and eat hot clam chowder at Pier 39. He even lets them have control of the radio dial, which quickly gets tuned to commercial hip hop station KMEL.

James Sanders

Principal Matthew Livingston.

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As they motor down the Embarcadero, a few of the girls amuse themselves by screaming "Hi!" at people walking on the street. Each time, an unsuspecting working slob looks up, startled, then cracks a huge grin. It's hard not to smile at a trolley full of beaming 12- and 13-year-olds dressed for success.

First it's SBC Park, then a pass by the Transamerica Pyramid, and on to Lombard Street. Many of the kids have never seen the city's crookedest lane, and they beg the driver to actually navigate its curves. He ignores them.

At Pier 39, Livingston can't find a chowder stand that can accommodate 34 and buys the students burritos instead. After a breezy jog across the Golden Gate Bridge, the trolley heads back to the Bayview. As the familiar torn-up environs of Third Street come into view, Livingston talks of stressful, irritating realities.

He frowns and clings to the brass pole of the trolley.

"You know," he says, "you can say, 'Oh [Davis] looks better. It's quieter. The kids are more on task.' You can feelthat, but you can't measure it."

"Hey!" the girls shout at somebody on the street, and Livingston corrects: "Hi."

The Dream Schools' success, Livingston frets, will be measured ultimately by the results of the STARs. It's the only grading system that's quantifiable, not "an opinion."

But that doesn't make the standardized tests a true measure of what has happened at Gloria R. Davis. "Everybody is looking at our school," he says, as the trolley full of happy honor students rolls home. "But they don't see this."