Lindbergh High’s Ron Helms
Missouri’s 2007 High School Principal Of The Year

by Murray Farish

March 30, 2007

To talk with Lindbergh High School Principal Ron Helms, one has to do it on the move. Helms, 58, doesn’t like to sit still for long. A recent interview with Helms started in Helm’s office, moved to two different hallways, past the school gym, and finally to the cafeteria.

“If you keep moving around. they can’t get a good shot at you,” Helms deadpanned.

But another challenge of interviewing Helms is that plenty of people — Lindbergh students, teachers, and coaches — get all kinds of shots from Helms: good-natured barbs, sharp questions, and answers to questions of their own. In the increasingly intense atmosphere of a high school during the high-stakes testing era, Helms manages to be both serious and open, steadfast and approachable. Helms knows his students by name, and he knows what they do.

It’s this kind of attention to the individuals in the school that led to Helms being named the 2007 High School Principal of the Year by the Missouri Association of Secondary School Principals.

Helms, who was selected from more than 600 principals statewide for the honor, said the students and teachers at Lindbergh deserve the credit.

“Things like this happen because a lot of people have worked very hard,” Helms said. “We have a plan for success, and we’ve been successful, but that’s because the students and teachers in this building want to succeed and they’re willing to do the work that success requires.”

Lindbergh has certainly been successful in Helms’ six years in charge. Test scores, GPAs, and graduation rates have risen, dropouts and discipline referrals have dramatically declined. Lindbergh has been named one of the top 1,000 schools in America. Also, the school’s scores on state assessment tests and collegiate aptitude exams are among the best in the area.

Much of this success, according to Superintendent James Sandfort, is due to Helms’ efforts to “personalize” the high school.

“Ron has worked hard to personalize the high school environment, first and foremost, by example,” Sandfort said. “He has worked hard with his staff to be sure each student feels valued and included.

“Lindbergh High School has evolved under Ron’s leadership into a true professional learning community,” Sandfort added.

How can a large high school like Lindbergh be “personal?”

Helms said there’s no way, these days, that a high school can’t be.

“We have 2,000 kids at this high school,” Helms said. “That’s a very powerful lobbying group. They need to shape the school and make it into what they want it to be. To do that, they need to know how the school was run in the past.”

To that end, one of the first ideas Helms implemented at the high school was his annual “state of the state” address. When he gave his first such address to the student body in 2000, Helms showed students some comparisons between Lindbergh and other St. Louis County high schools.

“Lindbergh High School was at the bottom of that list of comparable school districts in almost every statistic,” Helms said. “Our students were sort of shocked by this, and they took on the challenge.”

But first they had to feel a stake in the school itself, Helms said.

“We laid out the data on where we were, then we laid out goals and directions for where we wanted to be,” Helms said. “That’s one step. Now you’ve got to sit down with each individual student to work together and build a plan for how to get them where we want to be.”

Helms has given a new version of the address each year, celebrating the improvement while still pushing for more.

“We’re not as good as we can be,” Helms said. “Our standardized test scores are not the highest in the state. We can get our dropout rate to zero and our graduation rate to 100 percent. We’ve had a 70 percent drop in disciplinary referrals, but we can still get those lower.

“You build the success of the school through the success of the individual,” Helms continued. “The kids are really in charge here, and if you give them the right information, they’ll act on it. They’re the most important factor here.”

Or “there,” as the case may be — “there” being wherever Lindbergh High School students find themselves in their extracurricular activities. And “there” Ron Helms will be.

In just over a half an hour in the school cafeteria, Helms made personal commitments to several students to appear at a soccer game, a water polo match, a tennis match, and a cross country meet. All in different places, all in one evening.

“And this weekend there’s a concert and a play,” Helms said. “They like to see you in these outside contexts, and they notice if you’re around.

“I don’t know if there’s an average work week,” Helms said, citing the support of his wife Karen, who recently retired from the Hazelwood School District. “You try to do whatever you can to be involved. And I love it.

“My favorite part of this job is working with these kids and helping them succeed,” Helms added.

And his least favorite part of the job?

“Whenever I’m not doing that,” Helms said.