Odessa Johnson closes the book on Modesto school board service

By MERRILL BALASSONE
mbalassone@modbee.com

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Odessa Johnson is easy to spot on Sundays at the Second Baptist Church off California Avenue, wearing lilac, blue or silver hats with sequins, rhinestones or polka dots.

She has a degree from an Ivy League university, but she remembers what it's like to walk to school with no sidewalks.

Johnson met her best friend in a Maze Boulevard laundromat, but feels just as comfortable in the offices of California's most influential school officials.

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Johnson, 68, has been a fixture in Modesto education for 45 years. She has been a Modesto High School teacher, Modesto Junior College dean and a 16-year member of the Modesto City Schools Board of Education. She will attend her last school board meeting Monday after deciding not to seek re-election.

Johnson has lived west of Highway 99 for most of her life in Modesto, and she's become an icon in that part of town.

During her time on the board, she's proved herself to be approachable, accessible and effective.

"Odessa is the type of person, if you meet her once, you've met her all the time," said Andrea Thompson, a former Modesto High student of Johnson's. "You see her everywhere. She can talk to anybody on any level, I don't care who they are. She just has a deep sense of community."

District administrators said Johnson's personality allowed her to reach parents, many without much formal education, who were afraid to stand and speak at board meetings.

"She was straightforward with parents; she didn't use educational bureaucratic jargon to disguise the issue," said Jim Pfaff, who worked with Johnson as a high school principal and associate superintendent. "She would look straight at the parent at the podium and tell them what she was doing. It might not be an answer they like, but they would accept it because it came from Odessa."

They would accept it because Johnson knew how to reach most everybody. She could pound her fist on the table one minute, then let out a deep belly laugh the next.

Respected for her strong stands

One fist-pounding issue came in 2005, when Johnson continu-ally voted against the district's policy to put high schoolers into college preparatory courses based only on their state test scores. Johnson believed test scores alone, without using grades or teacher references, would keep too many students from going on to four-year colleges. A lawsuit eventually forced the district to add other ways for students to qualify for the classes.

Johnson also led the effort to revise a U.S. Constitution test required for students to graduate from eighth grade. Some argued the long multiple-choice questions were too tough for special education students or those who were learning English to understand. The test was revamped in 2006.

" 'That was the way we always did it' was not a platform for her," said Robin Brown, Johnson's former school board colleague. "She wasn't afraid to push an issue, even if it made somebody mad. I had a lot of respect for that."

Johnson supported former longtime Superintendent Jim Enochs' plan to put full-time college counselors in each high school during the 1999-2000 school year, despite its cost. Since then, more Modesto students have gone on to four-year colleges and have earned millions more in financial aid scholarships.

Pfaff said if he forgot to include data on how many students of color were completing University of California or California State University requirements, "Odessa was going to call me on it."

Though Johnson has deep roots in the city's predominately black neighborhoods, her colleagues said her focus was on improving education for at-risk children of all colors.