The Miami Herald

Decmber 14, 2004

Page 1A

by DAVID OVALLE

The roof has leaked, mold has festered, portable classrooms have rotted and so many rats have scurried around the gum-stained halls that students once picketed. But the stories hidden in the hallways of North Miami Senior High are infinitely more colorful than the walls' battleship-gray hue.

In a few years, the Miami-Dade school district plans to raze this building and put up a new school on what is now a football field. What will remain is a surprisingly rich past - alumni that include a baseball Hall of Famer, politicians and the president of NBC. Moreover, the school's quest to reinvent itself mirrors that of North Miami, a city with a storied but overlooked legacy, one undergoing massive redevelopment amid changing demographics. ``

Nobody is in awe when you say you went to North Miami High. If you mentioned Gables, Miami or Edison, there is something of respect,'' said City Councilman Scott Galvin, a 1986 grad. ``We´re a nondescript kind of school in a nondescript community.'' Drive down Northeast 135th Street just past Sixth Avenue and there looms the windowless school surrounded by a chain-link fence that has all the aesthetic charm of a state penitentiary. It has been battered by five decades of use - thousands of students a day, including day and night classes - and few dispute it: North Miami Senior High is a dump. This becomes evident as you stroll outside, around the weed-choked fountain lined by concrete frogs (the hangout favored by slackers), through the front doors and past the green-shirted security guard.

RANGE OF MEMORIES The stuffy hallways exude lost memories: the tragic; the happy; the absurd. The salutatorian who programmed a robot to give a commencement speech. The senior shot through the throat by his father after an argument over prom money. The Russian class taught at the height of the Cold War. The principal who banned Brave New World and 1984.

``That´s the place I was student body president. That´s where I held my first high elected office,'' said Florida Sen. Dave Aronberg, D-West Palm Beach, a 1989 grad. ``It was a school that didn´t have a lot of money, or a fancy mall'' like The Mall at 163rd Street near North Miami Beach High. ``But we had a lot of pride.´´

On a recent day, inside Room 607, English teacher David Hudak chatted with students. For more than three decades, Hudak - who rides a skateboard and wears old-school Converse sneakers - has taught students Othello, The Color Purple and Don Quijote de La Mancha. As in the city itself, the ethnic makeup of Hudak's classes has shifted over the years, from mostly white to mostly Haitian American.

``Kids are kids, no matter what generation,´´ Hudak said as he offered a walking tour of the campus. ``They´re so enthusiastic, so full of energy. They keep me young.'' THE BEGINNING North Miami Senior High opened after construction delays in 1951, originally as Edward L. Constance Junior High (the name was changed a few years later). For decades, the city's only high school has been plagued by crowded classes and the inevitable confusion with the rival blessed with the extra word: North Miami Beach. The school's decrepit condition doesn't appear to bother Hudak as he weaved through streams of teens into a near-empty cafeteria. What irks is the lack of school spirit. The cafeteria walls are splashed with green and gray, the official colors of the North Miami Pioneers. But Pioneer Pride is nearly dead.

``We had a real covered wagon in here,´´ Hudak said. ``We´d bring it out for the homecoming parade.'' The wagon was removed to make room for more tables. Attendance at football games has dwindled. The homecoming parade that once closed North Miami's main drag disappeared long ago. The yearbook died for lack of interest. `

BAD REPUTATION´ ``The school itself has a very bad reputation,´´ said junior Stanley Kong, 16, who is enrolled in North Miami's respected International Baccalaureate program. ``I´m more attached to the program than the school itself or the spirit.'' Maybe students feel no ownership for their shoddy school. Maybe it's deeper.

``There is not nearly the community attachment to it as there once was,´´ said Galvin, the only current North Miami Council member to have graduated from the school. ``North Miami´s population is more transient than it used to be; you don't have the same roots here.'' Galvin is helping replant the roots. Using $5,000 of leftover campaign money, which can be given to charities, he recently bought the football team new uniforms. Inspired by vibrant alumni networks like Edison's ``Over-the-Hill Gang,´´ he has begun reaching out to alumni for donations.

Bill Conti, the Oscar-winning composer known for creating the score for the Rocky movies, graduated from North Miami.

Ron Book, the powerful Miami-Dade lobbyist; Aronberg, the state senator; and

Hall of Fame pitcher Steve Carlton are all Pioneers.

NBC can boast president Jeff Zucker and reporter Fred Francis. ``It completely shaped who I am,´´ Zucker said of his alma mater. ``It was an incredibly diverse student body, which also helped prepare me to deal with people of every background.''

Hudak, the skateboarding English teacher, has mentored students of all types. He exits to the dusty football practice field, which doubles as a parking lot. ``It´s a whole different world out here,´´ Hudak explained, pointing to a row of about two dozen portable classrooms.

Teacher Jim Kononoff stopped to chat.

TV SERIES?

Kononoff is pitching to the networks a TV series loosely based on the school and set in a blue-collar Haitian-American neighborhood. It's set in North Miami and features a principal with mysterious overseas connections and a science teacher who may or may not be a Neo-Nazi. ``Think Boston Public set in Miami,´´ Kononoff said before strolling off. Hudak smiled and gazed at the field. He lives in Miami Beach, but he calls North Miami his home.

A huge condo development east of Biscayne Boulevard is expected to pump millions into North Miami for affordable housing, a sporting arena and a new charter high school. But it is on this parched field that the new North Miami Senior High will be erected. Now 58, Hudak hopes to teach at least one year in the new building before he retires. ``I think it´s a good chance to start over,´´ Hudak said, his eyes awash in optimism. ``A new beginning.´´ Illustration:color photo: David Hudak (a) photo: David Hudak (a)m North Miami Senior High (a) CLASS TIME: English teacher David Hudak has taught at North Miami Senior High for 30 years. A file photo of the high school in the 1980s is at right. TIM CHAPMAN/HERALD STAFF `FULL OF ENERGY´: In three decades, teacher David Hudak says the student demographics have gone from mostly white to mostly Haitian American.

a) We will preserve the tile-inlay of the school logo which was laid by the class of 1958 in the main hallway. We discussed making it a wall-fixture in the new building, in order to prevent continued wear and tear.

b) We will create a new "Aboretum," perhaps even including some of the exact trees and plants in the current one.

c) We will preserve sections of "flatstone" that are at the front entrance to the school. Some of them will also be engraved and offered for sale as a souvenir.

Construction workers will also keep an eye open for any time capsules which might be buried across campus. At this point, we don't know of the specific locations of those that were buried in past years.

Exact plans for the new school have not yet been drawn, but it will feature a 2,000-seat gymnasium and state-of-the-art technological equipment for the classrooms.

I'll keep you informed of things as they progress! SCOTT GALVIN Class of 1986 and Pioneer Pride Fund Founder www.scott-galvin.com