"Teachers are used to coming in to a classroom with a clean floor; that was something we were always able to do," Brooks says. "We'd like to give them that, to sweep the classrooms every day, but the reality is, we can't. What I worry more about is how we're ever going to strip the floors and wash the furniture and the lights--the things you have to do to keep this place from falling apart down the line."

Teachers complain loudly about the grime. Privately, the custodians gripe that teachers and students don't cooperate in keeping the campus clean. It's all part of the resentments that fester when a school reaches the breaking point.

OLEETHA ARNOLD, 38, KNOWS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO SLIDE through high school unchallenged and emerge unprepared. And she knows that a dedicated teacher can spell the difference in a young person's life.

Twenty years ago, her path was charted by a science teacher at Jefferson High School who saw a bright young girl behind a rebel's facade, and pointed her toward college. Studying on a scholarship at Lawrence University in Wisconsin, she learned a lesson that has marked her 13 years as a teacher--the importance of rigorous preparation for college-bound teen-agers.

Now, each of the 200 students in her five classes has a writing assignment each day. Most of her evenings are given over to grading their papers. She buys supplies the school does not provide, so her students can learn to conduct lab experiments.

"I know a lot of teachers are opting for demonstrations, because a lab takes a lot of extra work," she says. "But if these kids don't get exposed to this in high school, the first time they have to do it in college, they're going to be lost."

The Grant administration prides itself on sending its students on to college. Almost half of its 650 June graduates will be accepted at universities next year, and another 300 will enroll in junior college, Collins brags. But Arnold wonders what those figures will mean years from now, if students cannot succeed in college.

And as bad as things have been this semester, it is likely to get worse this spring when pending cuts will cost Grant four teaching positions, 25 of its 550 classes and the money to hire substitute teachers, forcing full-time instructors to give up their free periods to cover.