Vent

I don't know why we even bother to have school in the spring. Here is just a sampling of things students miss school for - track, boys tennis, baseball, softball, state testing, tanning appointments, prom shopping, choir rehearsals, band rehearsals, school sponsored trips, family vacations, hockey tryouts, and on and on and on. What is the use trying to teach something in the face of this?

*****

During first block, one moron comes in and asks if I'll let him skip second block. Great - addition by subtraction. When I said no, he couldn't believe it.

Then I polled my Brit Lit class - which he was interrupting - to see how many of them skipped. So I called on a few students who I knew were both honor students and attended regularly. They agreed - they attended regularly.

He was not impressed.

So he is not in second hour. I was afraid he would show up and make class unbearable because he wanted to skip. At least he skipped (I believe he want to work on a trailer) so the class doesn't have to be distracted by how much he doesn't want to be here.

I just don't understand why we tolerate this type of attitude in our school. I'll mark him unexcused and he'll get a detention. But what will come of that? Nothing.

As one administrator told one of my colleagues when he wanted to kick a kid out who was being a real distraction, "There are only a few weeks left of school, let's just make the most of it."

What a joke.

******

At the first communion dinner Kristie and I attended last weekend, the host's mother talked about how shocked she was that something like the killing spree at West Virginia could actually happen. Why didn't they stop him? Why wasn't the campus locked down.

I just shook my head and said, "That could happen in my school right now." And I think that's true for the majority of the schools in our state - if not the country.

We do our mandatory lock downs and evacuations. But that is just for face value. Here is how secure we are here - when we evacuate, the student body is marched over to another location several blocks away. This location is supposedly secure. However, this was reported at the school board meeting, and that information found it both into the paper and onto the radio, so anyone could tune in and found out our 'safe spot' for evacuations. Not that it would be hard to figure it out, but it's just one example of our veil of security.

It's no secret that you can push hard enough and pop open one of our entrances - any time you want. Our administration has made the school board aware of this. But it would take close to 20 grand to secure all the entrances. Our school board apparently doesn't want to spend that. So let's just say someone were to enter that way and - God forbid - do something awful - and then the media descends and the public wants to know how a tragedy like that could possibly happen. Then the finger pointing would start. I imagine the school board would say they weren't officially or thoroughly notified of the breech in security - the administration would say they did notify all the proper authorities - law enforcement would give their standard, "We have done the best we could do" - the teachers would criticize the whole ordeal - and we'd all look like complete incompetents.