For 27 years, Robert Gonzales has been the auto-collision program teacher at the Barbara Jordan High School for Careers. It is the only place he's ever taught, the only courses he's ever led. When he started at Barbara Jordan, the school had just been recognized by Omni Magazine as one of the "10 Schools of the Future in the United States."
Photo courtesy of Robert Gonzales
Teacher Robert Gonzales doesn't understand why auto collision is being cut when his students have done so well.
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In 1999 he was voted Teacher of the Year at the school — not bad for someone who'd dropped out of his own high school in tenth grade and who took a circuitous route to college and the teaching profession. He's on the school's shared-decision-making committee, and on his last evaluation at the end of March, his principal, Andria Schur, found that he "exceeded expectations" — the highest mark possible — in 11 of 13 categories.
He can recite names and finishes of countless students he's taken to district and regional body-work competitions.
"I've seen Bobby's program," says Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers. "The important thing is kids walk out of those programs and right into a job."
School-administration notes taken during a recent visit to Gonzales's class document a teacher who is "constantly moving from student to student, giving details/feedback," and one who has to give out instructions just one time to students, without constant reminders before the tasks of the day are completed.
In his room, everything moves at speeds of fast and faster. "There is no normal. There is no slow. It's minus 30 points if you sit down," says senior Christian Cuevas.
Students like Cuevas and fellow senior Jaqueline Zuniga, who've won district competitions against students from other schools in body work, say "Mr. G" and the program he leads are the reasons they attend any school at all, and Barbara Jordan in particular. Cuevas has already worked at two body shops; following graduation, Zuniga hopes to work with her boyfriend, who graduated from Barbara Jordan two years ago and started right up at a BMW dealership. They are practical and looking forward to making money; college will be on the side or later.
On March 25, Principal Schur told Robert Gonzales that "due to budget constraints" thanks to the state's financial crisis, she is shutting down his auto-collision program at the end of this school year. She is retaining the auto-technology and welding program strands taught by other teachers. But auto collision is gone, and there will be no place for Gonzales at Barbara Jordan in the fall.
A week later, Gonzales says, an office worker tried to get him to sign a paper agreeing that his continuing contract would be terminated — thereby stripping him of his right to be placed in another teaching position in the district if one became available. (He declined to sign.)
Schur denies that Gonzales would have ended his contract rights by signing. "Actually, the template that comes from the district is informing them that they do have continuing contracts, and that if there's anybody else in the school district that has less seniority, then they would go to that program. However, if everything was closed across the district and there wasn't another program, period, then the program altogether would be cut and then they are available to apply for any other types of positions, just like anybody else. But they would not be guaranteed a position in that field."
As for why Gonzales's program has been cut, Principal Schur says that it didn't have the numbers, and that the school is "trying to shift to more 21st-century jobs."
Instead, she suggests that students interested in body work and painting cars might want to change to the fine arts. "We're opening up some advanced-placement courses in the area of art, two college-level courses: studio art and art history. Both advanced placement."
Cuevas and Zuniga, who are graduating with plans to go into body work as an immediate career, don't quite understand this. Setting aside the question of whether AP studio art and art history will a) result in any immediate jobs, or b) satisfy the urge to two-tone a car or bend a wrecked hood back into shape and operation, they just don't see how cars aren't in anyone's future.
"I don't think cars are ever going to be over with. Everyone's always going to have wrecks," Zuniga says.
Or at Cuevas puts it: "What's the point of going to Barbara Jordan High School for Careers if you're not studying a career?"
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Spend any time with Robert Gonzales, and it's fairly apparent that this is a guy who has forged his own special path and probably rubs some people the wrong way — not the best persona to have at a time when principals have been empowered to make personnel cuts at their campuses.
After opting for an early exit from Seguin High School, Gonzales enlisted in the Army at 17 and did two tours of duty in Vietnam as an infantryman. He went back to Seguin to his uncle's body shop and then, when he was 36, decided he wanted to teach body shop in high school. He entered the University of Houston in a special program as a first-time freshman on his way to a degree and teacher certification.
