What does it mean when the captain grabs the first lifeboat?

You may notice I haven't been my usual, garrulous self the last few months. You may have wondered why.

Our principal is leaving. He started the year more distracted than usual, which made one wonder. He had tried to move up in our own district last year, but nothing doing. It wasn't long into the year before he announced that he was taking an assistant superintendent job in another district.

Once the decision was announced, he was basically treading water. To be honest, I understand this. When I had my first job, which was NOT a happy experience (to put it mildly), I remember how relieved I was when I informed them several months before the end of school that I wouldn't be accepting another contract. Each day closer to the end of school was a relief. Nothing annoying seemed to really trouble me nor penetrate very deeply. Of course, that could have been interpreted as not caring. It wasn't that I didn't care about what went on around me; it's just that it wasn't worth getting worked up over. I still cared about the kids and my teaching, but I was able to ignore the bitter or dysfunctional parts of the staff and parents. It almost got to the point that, when these people would speak to me, all I heard was the trombone sound of adults talking in a "Peanuts" TV special. You know what I'm talking about: "Bwah-bwah BWAHbwahbwah!" As my students would say, "I was, like, 'Whatever.'"

And if that wasn't traumatic enough, now we are losing several assistant principals. It's like Eisenhower's domino theory around here, let me tell you. Even Assistant Principal Plea Bargain is leaving, which just goes to show that interviews really can be manipulated, and also shows that there are a few silver linings going on around here, too. But sometimes you prefer the devil you know to the one you don't.

But must it follow that when a principal leaves, the assistants all try to leave, too? Could it be that something has been said or done to panic the other administrators in the building?

Then I looked around, and I noticed that several other principals within the district were leaving, too. Further, one principal in our district tragically passed away from cancer earlier in the year. So there has been, and will be, a lot of turnover around here, and a lot of trauma. Other principals are also looking around, so there may be more.

So here's the question: what's going on here?

Here's the deal: we also have a pretty new superintendent. He is a very nice person, but if I was going to give him a nickname, I would call him "Lt. Commander Data"-- and let's remember that I LOVE Star Trek because I am a geek, so this is a playful little jibe. I understand why he adores data so much, I do: it's a NCLB world. But I LIVE in the NCLB world, I and my colleagues. We know that everything is subjective and nothing is objective when it comes to data. Lt. Commander Data is more like a local chief ruling over his corner of the NCLB world. He's kind of like the King Nebuchanezzar of our world, if you're into Biblical allusions. And apparently, several administrators are declining, politely, but resolutely, to climb into the fire for refusing to worship that golden image of data which is of course an illusion. American public schools are in a Babylonian captivity, and the Promised land always lies right over the next hilltop. The problem is, when you climb what you think is that hilltop, there's always another hilltop that pops up.

Attempts to quantify learning should come with a little warning sticker: "Warning- these results are more artificial than they appear." There is an emphasis on numbers over everything else, and a certain tone-deafness on morale and team-building and other sorts of what are considered trivialities. There are other things besides data to running a school, and a school district. That's my naive little news flash, were I asked my opinion. But the NCLB world does not really encourage the hiring of people persons, after all.

And once again, it may just boil down to experience. A lot of these principals, and indeed our superintendent, spent very few years actually in the classroom before they moved into administration, and they certainly haven't been in classrooms very much since then. Many of them haven't been teachers in the NCLB world, so they have no idea what the impact of various policies have had on the classroom.

So we have many openings in administration right now. This is a situation that makes most of the rest of us pretty damned tense, truthfully, and it shouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. There is something out-of-joint here. Let's see if someone besides the teachers notice.

Hide the butter knives, because I may be despondent after this.

Are you a history teacher, or a parent? Well go read this, and see how you do.

Here's the actual article from USAToday.

Jeez. I need a drink.

More educational malfeasance along the Mississippi River...

The superintendent of the Rivervew Gardens school district, in suburban north St. Louis County, has been charged with theft, tax-evasion, and --WOW-- suspended WITH pay:

St. Louis County prosecutors on Friday charged Riverview Gardens School District Superintendent Henry Williams with two counts of stealing and three counts of attempting to evade income taxes.

The charges allege that Williams, 65, wielded power to establish a pattern of theft and deception from January 2003 through December of last year.

Together, the charges carry a maximum sentence of 37 years.

St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert P. McCulloch said Williams, through his attorneys, agreed to surrender at the St. Louis County Justice Center by Friday evening. Bond has been set at $50,000.

McCulloch said the first felony theft count involved more than $100,000 in payments that Williams ordered, including interest on his personal loans.

The second count involved about $1,000 in reimbursements for fake travel expenses and double-billing district credit cards.

The prosecutor also said Williams told the school district to pay at least $60,000 to an annuity account in an attempt to evade paying income tax.

Williams filed fraudulent Missouri income tax returns for 2003 through 2005, asserting he made as much as $87,000 less than his actual income in a given year, the charges allege.

Williams, 65, was suspended Tuesday after the Post-Dispatch reported that district records show he diverted at least $85,000 extra to his retirement and insurance accounts.

On Thursday, the news got worse for Williams and the district when a state audit reported that the superintendent was overpaid by $158,400 during his tenure, and that the district had wastefully spent $12.4 million in the past three years.

In a masterpiece of understatement, the article states that, "Auditors chalked up the debacle to lack of oversight, improperly prepared budgets and poor planning."

The district has been on a steady slide for years, but the real temblors began rumbling when the state audit was released last week.

A scathing state audit revealed Thursday that the leaders of Riverview Gardens schools have bilked the district for hundreds of thousands of dollars. They've sent contracts and jobs to friends and family, spent money on artwork and theater tickets and travel, and left district bank reserves almost entirely empty.

In the wake of such evidence, the board announced that it had stripped Superintendent Henry Williams of his duties, sent him home and started the process to fire him. His hearing will be April 18.

Missouri Auditor Susan Montee said her team found problems in every aspect of district finances.

"What astounded us was how fast they misspent money, rather than how much," Montee said. "We found that so disheartening."

And, according to Superintendent Williams, it's all just a gross misunderstanding, and no doubt completely unfair, too:

The Riverview Gardens School District superintendent charged last week with felony theft and tax evasion portrayed himself on Monday as a victim of mistreatment. He questioned a state audit that found he had bilked the district of almost $160,000.

In his first public statement since the scandal broke last week, Henry Williams, 65, predicted that he would be vindicated.

"I am deeply saddened and utterly dismayed by my recent mistreatment by the Riverview Gardens School Board and the reverberations that their actions have had on government officials and the local media," he says in a faxed statement.

"Without question, this is certainly not the first time that sensational allegations have been levied against an individual, only later to be proven false when scrutinized and sanitized by the light of truth."

Apparently, Mr. Williams' contract requires him to be caught actually using a handgun in the commission of the hold-up requires many layers of bureaucracy to be navigated before he actually could be terminated (emphasis mine):

Riverview Gardens School Board members said Monday they are considering firing Superintendent Henry Williams, following revelations that Williams has directed an extra $85,000 in district money to his retirement and life insurance accounts.

Board President Gilda Hester emphasized that no decision has been made. The board, she said, has asked the district's lawyer, Cindy Ormsby, to prepare the necessary paperwork.

"The board has instructed her to let us know how this violates his contract, and options for the board to consider," Hester said.

If Ormsby recommends that the board fire Williams, "then we will act on her recommendation," Hester said.

Ormsby said the board has scheduled a closed meeting for Thursday, immediately following a public session at which State Auditor Susan Montee will present findings of an audit of district policies and finances, among other things.

The board could choose to fire Williams that night, members said.

But Hester said the board could make a decision earlier. A regular board meeting is set for 6:30 p.m. today.

Williams was not available to comment. He told staff and board members he was admitted to the hospital early Monday and would be out of the office until at least today. His attorney, Larry Deskins, said Williams had "an issue."

...Some board members said they welcomed the opportunity to remove him.

"I'm saying to them, this is what we need to right the ship," said board member Tommie Pierson, who said as many as 10 residents called him personally to discuss the payments.

Ormsby, the district's lawyer, said such revelations alone would not nullify Williams' contract. But if the board believes the allegations, it could fire him for cause, she said.

The board has tried to remove Williams before. Last May, the board suspended him after the Post-Dispatch revealed district payments to Williams' girlfriend. A shift in power brought him back a week later. Hester, Marlene Terry, Michael Person and Jennifer Erby voted in his favor.

Jim Morris, spokesman for the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, said Williams also could face discipline from the state.

The Riverview Gardens School Board could pass a resolution stating Williams is guilty of misconduct, and could request the state Board of Education take disciplinary action against his licenses, Morris said.

Williams holds certificates to be a superintendent and an elementary educator.

The state board would hold an administrative hearing, Morris said, at which the district would present its case, and Williams would defend himself.

Of course, this is the same board which voted to renew Mr. Williams' contract last year, so we'll just have to wait and see what actually happens. But during his tenure they have lost two-thirds of the points they had earned toward accreditation. That should have sent up flares somewhere.

And I am sure there are more lawsuits in the works.

St. Louis public schools circle the drain

Yesterday, the St. Louis City Public Schools was officially stripped of its accreditation and placed under the control of the state. Students and parents converged upon the meeting of the State Board of Eduation at which the decision for takeover was made and, over their protests, the deed was done.

With one St. Louis student in custody and scores of other students and parents choking on tears of frustration, the State Board of Education on Thursday revoked the accreditation of the 169-year-old St. Louis Public Schools and voted to turn its operation over to a businessman with limited educational experience.

"I feel pain for them," state board President Peter Herschend of Branson said of the 150 St. Louis students and parents who crowded a state office building to protest the intervention. "But these young men and women have been denied a decent education by the system."

If the move is not blocked in court, the transitional school board headed by St. Louis County developer Rick Sullivan, chairman of McBride & Son Enterprises, will assume control of the city schools on June 15.

Some school board members have promised a lawsuit to throw out the state action.

Last week, a contingent of students skipped their classes to stage a sit-in of the mayor's office, demanding that he restore their accreditation. They claimed that a student had been told that admission and scholarship would be affected if the district lost its accreditation. A letter had been circulated among the students, allegedly written by a student in the district, that made this claim.

One of the students’ main concerns is that their college admissions, scholarships and financial aid will be impacted if the district loses its state accreditation.

St. Louis Public Schools are currently provisionally accredited. The state board has expressed concerns about the district’s academic progress.

Superintendent Diana Bourisaw spoke at the press conference held by the students this afternoon. She said district officials compiled a list of the first-choice colleges to which students have applied. Last week, district researchers began calling the admission offices of the schools on the list.

They have discovered two which have different admission requirements for students who graduate from unaccredited high schools -- the University of Kansas and Northwest Christian College. Bourisaw said they have contacted about 30 or 40 schools so far and plan to continue the effort next week.

Hmmm- TWO out of thirty or forty. Some teachers and other adults supported the sit-in, apparently as clueless as the students themelves about the fact that the STATE Board of education, not the mayor of St. Louis, makes decisions about accreditation.

Interestingly, the sit-in ended before this week's spring break holiday from classes. Because, you know, during spring break, people have PLANS.

Here's the problem. For years, the school district has been seen more as a source of jobs and easy cash to pilfer than as a place where education was a priority. The adults who have "managed" the district of 33,000 students have never placed the needs of children for an EDUCATION as their first priority. Last summer, the school board fired Superintendent Creg Williams after a mere 15 months on the job, as I wrote about here. The district has been through 4 superintendents since 2003, including a corporate "turnaround specialist" with no education experience who had formerly been in charge of clothier-to preppies Brooks Brothers.

The St Louis Public Schools have been viewed as a place to get a paycheck without having to do much; as a place where computers and iPods were purchased and then vanished into thin air, as a place where voodoo incantations were used against enemies and pitchers of water were thrown over the heads of subordinates, as a place where the most important bona fides for gaining a school board seat was how much you could game the system. Public school in the city of St. Louis has been promoted as a place to get a meal, or see a social worker, or hang out with your friends-- anything but as a place to learn.

The schools have been physically and intellectually crumbling for years. No one raised a hand to change things. Now, suddenly, after repeated warnings, when accreditation has justifiably been lost through the action of no one but the people running St. Louis schools, we see petulance and shocked disbelief. Not to mention fear that at last retribution and accountability may-- MAY-- be on the way.

Who knows if the state takeover will work? I'm not too sure that putting a wealthy white resident of the subrurbs whose children attended exclusive Catholic schools, and who has no formal experience in education, will establish any sort of credibility for the massive turn-around needed to turn the buildings belonging to the district back into SCHOOLS again. But, hey-- the president of the school board sent her own children to a chi-chi county school district through a voluntary transfer program, so she wasn't much of a stakeholder, either. The mayor's bumbling actions toward trying to get some sort of control over the district is what put the combative board president there in the first place. The parents have all too often demonstrated the most blase indifference to the failure to educate. But certainly the current set-up has led to nothing but fraud and the criminal denial of an education to the thousands of students who have had the misfortune of passing through most of the schools in the district.

What was that saying of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's? "Justice delayed is justice denied." We hear cries that the takeover is unfair. I really don't care about unfairness-- I'm more concerned with the morally indefensible injustice of maintaining a school district for the convenience of adults who fatten themselves at the trough while ignoring the imperative to EDUCATE the children for whom the district exists in the first place.

And let the lawsuits begin.

So do I need to wipe their noses too?

So there I was at Checkpoint Cornelius, and this young man was standing next to me eating some ersatz nachos. He was a young fella who needed a lot of correction so I was attacking one problem at a time:

"Hey, bud. Please put on your ID." He did this, and did a kind of twirl as he did it. A chip fell to the floor.

"Oh, you are SO going to pick that up," I said, giving him a minor look. He started to act like he was going to refuse in a teasing manner that is oh-so-typical of 14-year-old boys, but I shot him the stronger version of "the look" and he bent over and picked it up, then threw it in the trash. Kid wanders away, then he comes back. I've got a magnetic personality, what can I say?

Along comes our freshest-faced AP, who sees this kid and starts griping at him about his sagging pants, which have moved south as he has moved away-- I mean, my mouth is open getting ready to say something. AP Doogie Howser threatens to send the kid home, so the kid pulls up his pants and does a little rap about how his pants aren't the AP's business, and I start to respond to this rudeness, when the AP cuts him off and threatens to send him home for FIVE days for the pants plus the backtalking. Then the AP says,

"And Ms. Cornelius! If you see his pants even two inches below his waist I want you to write him up!" And then he walks off.

Now---- HUH? I am all for enforcing the dress code-- you know me-- but if the AP already doesn't like the sagging and the lipping off, why doesn't he take care of it himself? After all, he's got far more freedom to act than I do. I have to say, it sounded like he thinks I need instructions to enforce the rules (and BTW, anyone who gives a kid a referral for sagging is normally going to be completely ignored and made to look idiotic in front of administrators, kids, and anyone else unless you see body parts).

So sure-- I've got plenty of time on my hands to deal with your problems.

And how did YOUR day go, dear?

So try this one on for size:
6:45 am--I arrive at school at the crack of dawn, notice mucho police presence in front, but head to my room and check my email, to find that there has been a bomb threat phoned in. Teachers are encouraged to look for anything suspicious.

7:45 am-- announcement comes over the intercom for teachers to check their email. We are assured that they don't think the threat is serious, but just in case, we're going to have a fire drill to evacuate the building at 9:50.

8:30 am-- sub arrives so I can go to an IEP meeting while my class at the time takes a test. Some kid comes to the door from in-school suspension and wants me to pass an envelope to another kid so that that kid 2 can buy kid 1 a ticket to homecoming. I demur, and wonder why this kid is roaming the halls if he is in in-school suspension.

8:35-9:20 am-- go to IEP meeting.

9:22 am: ask activities secretary if a kid can buy another kid's homecoming tickets for them. No, is the answer.

9:27 am: return to classroom. Explain that they are going to have a formal fire drill with the police and fire departments coming, so urge kids (including 3 pregnant students) to go to the restroom now, since this may take some time. Remember, they are supposed to be taking a test, so already I am envisioning that the distractions have now reached a critical point.

9:50 am: even though they've gotten a heads' up, kids all jump when fire alarm goes off. We all troop outside, where...

9:50- 10:45 am: we move all the kids to an isolated parking lot and then allegedly supervise them, while news station helicopters wheel overhead "riding shotgun in the sky" as Joni Mitchell would put it. I break up two near fights, one amongst a huge group of kids who deliberately jump up and down to hide the fact that punches are being thrown as they cheer on the mayhem. My friend Moose (all 5 feet nothing of her) and I separate kids in the midst of this maelstrom, and suddenly look at each other as we simultaneously realize that the last place we should be is in the middle of this, but it turns out okay and the kids separate although they snicker at the two ridiculous women who have waded in to their scrum, while all nearby male teachers have studiously looked the other way until the shooting was over.

10:47 am-- go back into the school (they found a suspicious package and destroyed it while we were outside). Attempt to finish test. Ha!

10:50-11:15 am-- keep kids in class while we receive 4 email messages telling us how to get lunch in for everyone. Tests seem insignificant now, while kids barrage me with questions about why we were out there for an hour... Oh, and by the way, grades are still due this afternoon by the end of school.

And the rest of the day was all bollixed up. It started to storm-- nothing too big, but definitely loud and wet. Thank goodness that didn't happen while we were outside with a million kids to herd.

3:00 pm--I went to pick up my kids from school to find out that Elder Daughter has band practice, so I pick up the others to avoid aftercare charges and realize that I must go home and then come back in 45 minutes because I am too zoned to go to a store.

3:30 pm-- get home. Cell phone has run out of power, so I plug it into the wall. Two seconds later, the power goes out for the fourth time in six weeks. I mean, downtown Baghdad has power more often that I do, while my neighbors across the street haven't lost it once. Whiiiine! So now I've also got NO phone.

4:15 pm-- go to get eldest daughter, then stop by cell phone store to get a car charger so I can call the $#@@@!!*% electric company to report that my @#@! power is out. The people there actually fast charge my phone in like 10 minutes. I did not know they could do this, and am deeply grateful.

4:20 pm-- call idiotic electric company, where no real human is brave enough to pick up the phone, so am told by a computer that 1000 customers have no power, and that they anticipate it will take until 10 pm to get it going again. The only bright spot about this is that I actually am not going to lose that much food, since I had to throw out over $300 worth last week when I lost power for a day and a half.

6:00 pm-- hubby comes home with food. Weight Watchers be damned! There's a canelloni in my sights!

6:15 pm-- power comes back on.

8:00 pm-- collapse from exhaustion. Drink bottle of wine with hubby. Children play quietly and peacefully in their rooms for once because they know what's good for them.

10:00 pm-- after seeing no mention of bomb threat on evening news-- how do the PR people pull this off every time something bad happens to our district? There must be a pact with Satan involved-- go to sleep, where I dream about trees knocking down powerlines and oversleeping for work.

Humor and bluster married in the face of tragedy

I love this picture. It shows the strength of the human ability to laugh. As Robert A. Heinlein explained in his classic Stranger in a Strange Land, we can only laugh when we grok the pain of the human condition.

Speaking of humor, not to mention an occasional dose of pathos, come on out to visit the 31st edition of the Carnival of Education, guest-hosted by the Science Goddess at What It's Like on the Inside. Ruminating Dude has a great post about the cost of applying for a teaching job in the Providence schools, and Muse tells a scary tale about forcing out older teachers in the name of educational reform in Israel. Rhymes with Right details inspiring efforts of schools in Houston to help those displaced by Katrina.

God bless us every one.