Spirit Week Post-Mortem

On Friday morning (last weeks's teacher workday), one of the Asst. Superintendents showed up at school for a workshop session, only to discover the toilet, washing machine, and mufflers still in front of the school. Apparently she expressed her dismay, since guests were coming. It was a major oversight by Principal Goldberg not to get that cleaned up by Thursday afternoon, but he'll learn.

I happened to hear this from our football coach, who I spoke with for a while on Friday. He's seen it all at our school - he went there, he's coached and taught there on and off for 30 years (winning a state title), he's been the asst. principal there, and he's seen two magnificent daughters graduate from there. Truly, the man is as upstanding as anyone at the school.

Coach provided a couple of us with a little anecdote that shed as much light on the Spirit Week/End of Western Civilization situation, in its own way, as any complex analysis could. Last year, he told us, he and another coach volunteered to show up to school around 6 am on Homecoming Day so they could go ahead and clear away all the homemade signs and other junk the kids were going to leave overnight. The idea, of course, was to 1) clean up trash, and 2) rob the little vandals of the glory of witnessing their works in broad daylight. So the two coaches loaded up their pick-ups and took off for the dump even before the first bell rang.

A couple of weeks later, he said, a parent came up to him before a ball game and told him she was very upset with him. "Why?" he asked. "Because," she replied,"you helped clear all the stuff away that my child helped put up before I could get there to capture it on videotape."

He also pointed out that last Wednesday, only two months removed from a late-night argument that got a student killed, many kids attended two separate late-night bonfire parties that took place on private property. The key is the term private property. In other words, somebody's parents said, "Sure, little Billy. Have your big ole' drunken fire party right here on your own sweet Dad's farm."

I'm sure they added that they didn't want anyone getting hurt or causing trouble. Hope they got it all on videotape, for the grandkids.