School is back in session, and many kids are expecting the same old routine. Well, guess what? IPS Superintendent Esperanza Zendejas has some changes in mind for the whole school district.

As most people in the city know by now, Zendejas comes to us from Brownsville, Texas, where she was the school superintendent.

In the past few years, Indianapolis Public Schools has had many problems, from keeping teachers at schools to keeping schools open to improving student performance.

Zendejas has her own ideas about how to improve IPS. However, her changes won't occur without help.

"I'm going to need the help of administrators, principals, teachers, custodians - because they have to keep schools clean - parents, children, students. Everybody needs to help," she said in a recent interview with Children's Express.

Before this interview, some students at Shortridge Middle School were asked, "What would you ask the superintendent if you could?"

They wanted to know whether school lunches could be improved.

Zendejas plans to do just that. She explained that she received an award for providing better lunches at her old school district.

"We created salad bars for elementary kids and food courts for high schools so they could have a variety of foods, so they just don't go, `Pizza today again?' " she said.

"We have to provide better lunches - otherwise kids are going to get bored. They're already bored in class, and then they have boring lunches. It makes for a boring student, right?"

Bored students have been another of IPS' problems. Lack of motivation can hurt many of the schools on probation for low test scores.

Zendejas said her major challenge will be to improve the district's academics. Last spring, some IPS schools showed improvement in ISTEP scores, but Zendejas says that's not good enough.

"The scores were not raised real dramatically. There was one or two schools that did that. The rest of the schools tended to raise them a little bit," she said.

Zendejas believes students will perform better if writing is part of their daily curriculum.

"The most difficult part is sitting down and taking a pencil and having to write an essay. That is tough because all of a sudden you have to think. You don't have a book in front of you that tells you everything you should say," she said.

Zendejas is expecting kids to work harder in the classroom. She also hopes they see the importance of preparing for college instead of focusing on sports and other extracurricular activities.

"There's a lot of kids that just want to be basketball players and football players. In California and in Texas, there were a lot of kids who wanted to be professional players too . . . and whenever they talked about being professional players, they wanted to go to college.

"Here, you get letters from kids and all they say is, `I want to be a professional basketball player or a professional football player,' and hardly ever do you see college," she continued.

"We need to change in IPS the attitude that kids need to go to college, especially if they are good athletes. . . . If they don't work on their academics, they aren't going to make it. Besides, if you get hurt, then how are you going to live? What are you going to do?"

Academics is not Zendejas' only priority. She plans to crack down on students who are disrespectful or disruptive. However, in her plan, that doesn't mean more suspensions.

"We plan to incorporate a mentoring program for students who are going to be suspended so that we cut down on suspensions," she explained.

In the program, the problem student would go to a first-grade classroom nearby and help the teacher. The idea is that the younger kids would look up to the older student, and the older student would gain some self-esteem.

"They'll think you're Mr. Big, Mr. Smart, Mr. Everything, when you've just been kicked out of high school for being Mr. Nothing, right? So all of a sudden, you go, `Hey, I'm important again,' and hopefully it will help you so when you go back to high school you say, `You know, I handled that issue wrong,' " she said.

Zendejas says any student caught with drugs or guns will be expelled. However, she needs parents' help in controlling violence at schools.

"If a family is always screaming at you, then the child goes to school and the child continues to what? Scream. Maybe those children don't know how to handle a situation any different.

"So whatever we want out of our schools, we need to have the support of it from the community."

While acknowledging that students must be held accountable for their actions, Zendejas realizes some teachers provoke problems.

"There are some teachers that are not very good teachers, and we need to help them out so they can become better teachers," she said.

She believes higher salaries will attract better teachers.

"We want to be the highest-paid district so that the good teachers that have gone to like the other townships could come back," she said.

EDITED BY: George Srour, 12; Sean Strother, 14. ASSISTANT EDITOR: Johnny Murff, 14.