Private Schools Left Behind -- Principal's Decision To Take Job Puzzled Muckleshoots At First

AUBURN - The Muckleshoot Tribal School sits on a back road near a burned-out shack and a row of rusting cars. Nearly all of its 80 students live in poverty, and a third suffer from learning disabilities, many caused by fetal alcohol syndrome.

For new Principal Harry Finks - who has run some of the nation's premier private schools, including one President Clinton's daughter, Chelsea, now attends - this tiny school poses perhaps his greatest challenge. It also closes the loop on an educational odyssey that began 33 years ago in a poor village in the Philippines.

For the past two decades, Finks, 56, has been principal at such exclusive institutions as Lakeside School and Bush School in Seattle; Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., where Chelsea Clinton is a student; and, most recently, the prestigious University of Chicago Laboratory Schools.

"I wanted to get back to what is real and not simply be among the handpicked," Finks said in his small office, which is adorned in Native-American art posters.

Tribal members were at first puzzled by Finks' desire to work at their school, said Jim Hopkins, the tribe's education coordinator.

"Teaching here isn't that financially attractive," Hopkins said. "He could've made a lot more at another school."

In fact, Finks said, the tribe pays him about half what he made at his last job in Chicago. And he works in one of the poorest communities in the state, where unemployment is high and the average yearly income is $4,000.

Finks said he intends to bolster academic achievement by using "old-fashioned" teaching methods.

He favors drilling students in reading, writing and math. Though he values creative teaching methods, he said the basics are especially crucial at the tribal school.

"It's the only way students can compete in the real world," he said.

Making their children more competitive is the tribe's goal. Because of the success of the Muckleshoot casino, which is expected to make millions of dollars annually, Hopkins, the education coordinator, is proposing to build a multimillion-dollar school to replace the aging seven-room building. The Tribal Council will decide later this year.

Though he has spent most of his career in exclusive private schools, Finks began his educational journey in a remote impoverished village in the Philippines. There, he and his wife, Kathy, taught English as Peace Corps volunteers in the early 1960s.

"Those two years truly changed our lives," he said. "I realized then that working with children was my calling in life."

When Finks returned to the United States, he taught for five years at an inner-city elementary school in Cleveland. Then, in what Finks called a "fluke," an old friend from the Peace Corps offered him the principal's job at Sidwell Friends.

That began 20 years of private-school service. From Sidwell, Finks went to Bush, where he was principal for three years. He then spent seven years as principal of Lakeside's middle school. Most recently, he ran the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, a 100-year-old institution where tuition costs $10,000 a year.

Finks left the Chicago job because he wanted to return to the Seattle area, where he owns a home and hopes to retire someday. Finks applied to the Seattle School District but received the tribal-school offer first. He said he had wanted to work in one of the Seattle district's inner-city schools, seeking an experience similar to his years in Cleveland.

At the Chicago school, one of Finks' greatest achievements was the creation of a library in the city's largest and most violent public-housing complex, the Robert Taylor Homes, said Lucinda Katz, the school's director.

She said Finks inspired his private-school students to collect books, design the layout of the library and rally the community to support it.

"He's a creative visionary in the field of education," said Katz. "He's a warm, compassionate man who was adored by parents, teachers and students."

That could be seen on a recent afternoon. As Finks walked into a room full of second-graders, they swarmed around him, each student pushing a book up to his face.

One crew-cut young boy hugged him at the waist. "Harry, will you read to us?" he begged.

Without a word, Finks took the book and sat on a couch in the classroom. Six children squeezed onto it, with Finks wedged in the middle.

"He's doing a great job," said Michelle Panicola, a special-education teacher who has worked at the school for two years. "He's constantly spending time with the kids. He doesn't hide behind a desk."

Finks would like to see his position filled by a Native American in the future.

"I hope this school one day produces an educator who'll come back to run this school and lead the tribe," he said.