Thoughts on the shutdown

On balance, I think I'm very proud of our students for both the idea and the execution of yesterday's walkout. I do not think that our school is unique in the scheduling problems (I've heard anecdotes, from various sources, about problems in most of the high schools in the district; it sounds like a lot has to do with how clever and plentiful the administrative staff of a given school are. We had a crisis in our scheduling role last year, so we're pretty badly hosed now, but other schools are still hosed, to some degree or another, too).

Our administration continues to proclaim that we're doing our best to resolve matters, and getting things fixed as quickly as possible. I actually completely and totally believe that-- but I also believe that our best is simply not good enough.

I was talking to a student yesterday after the walkout was over-- he was pleased that there had been a lot of press coverage on the scene. I commented that I suspect that reporters who cover the education beat have known that there's a problem for the last month, but you can only get so much out of the CEO's comments (we know there's a problem, it's a new system, we're working to resolve it). Yesterday, along comes an opportunity to put 300 kids with banners and signs on camera-- that's gold, baby...


What makes me sad is that our administration missed an opportunity to really make something positive from this: knowing that this was coming (the flyers were out there by 7:30 am, stating the plan to start the walkout at 9:50) the principal's response was to threaten and cajole, trying to prevent the walkout (a plan that was practically guaranteed to fail). A more decisive and progressive plan might have been, for example, to publicize that the penalty for participating in the walkout would be an in-school suspension (this is entirely supported by the student code of conduct), immediately following the demonstration, to be held in the auditorium. The content of the suspension would be a dialog between administration and students. I'd have gotten up and said, "Today, you executed your rights to demonstrate, despite it being prohibited by the rules of this school. Now, what's your next step? I can't fix this today, I can't even tell you exactly when it'll be fixed. I can tell you that we've put x man-hours into it, and that I'm as frustrated as you are. You've shined a light today on problems that exist throughout the district-- now how can we work together, as students and staff, to make sure that it gets fixed?"