We Don't Need No Administration

It's been a hard last couple of days as a parent in the Fairfax County Public Schools.  Oh, my boys struggle along as they always do, showing that they have the academic aptitude of their father.  God help me, I know how my folks must have felt.

It's not about them and their struggles to be studious.  Neither is it their teachers.  They have some wonderful teachers.  Not all, but most.  The teachers meet my expectations.

It's the layers upon layers above, which add no value at all.  None. They show a remarkable obliviousness to the whole point and purpose of public education.  In point of fact, they feel more like an impediment to public education.

Examples:  My older son went on a wonderful trip with his chorus yesterday.  They're going to Nashville, where they're going to sing and experience that city.  But in preparation for that trip, forms and paranoia.  Every bag had to be pre-searched, meaning parents were required to attend a meeting in which bags were gone through, one by one, like our children were freakin' Al Qaeda.  Parents then had to certify that this had happened, and then the bags had to be locked away.

One long suffering teacher, rolling her eyes, reminded the kids that two things were particularly forbidden.  

First, nothing should be in the bags that could, and I'll use her words here, be considered a weapon by "an insane imagination."  If we've reached the point where both parents and teachers know that the expectations of the administration are insane, perhaps there's a problem.

Second, there could be no home-made food sent with our kids.  No sandwiches.  No cookies.  Nothing.  Prepackaged and processed foods were fine.  But anything else would be considered contraband, and confiscated.  Why?  Because drugs.  And Drugs.  Every cookie could be laced with marijuana!

Again, eye-rolling from parents and from teachers, as wild and mindless fear and lawyer-driven liability-o-phrenia create a reality where we aren't even allowed to send a sandwich on a trip with our own child.

And today, I'd volunteered to drive my younger son to a performance.  He and his class are performing Antigone at the Greek consulate, and I'm going to drive some of them in my van.  But having pulled this whole thing together wonderfully, and secured parent volunteers, the teacher was forced to jump through another hoop.

There was the parental permission slip, of course.  But then there was also another form, which I was made to fill out in order to volunteer to drive my own child and his friends.  That form certified that 1) I had a drivers license, 2) that my vehicle was legal for operation in the state of Virginia, and 3) That my vehicle was insured.  Every single form then needed to be signed and approved by the principal of the school.

So this form did what, exactly?  I could not drive without a license.  Presumably, I did not build my van out of cardboard and aluminum tubing in my garage.  Please certify that you are not breaking the law?  What the Sam Hill is the point of such a thing?  The form was a complete and total waste of time and energy.  Requiring it was just another stressor to lay on top of a teacher who's doing an amazing job trying to create opportunities for her students.

The defining purpose of public education, its reason for being, is to teach our children how to be citizens of a free and democratic republic.  

If our schools feel like a paranoid hyper-bureaucratic police state, they cannot accomplish that goal.

A Shell Game

I knew I should have said something.

My Dad-Spidey-Sense went off in the morning, as we bustled and hustled the kids towards their buses. The weekend's activities had been fun, in the "I'm going to share with my friends" sort of way.  Telling stories about the creepy evening in an old creaky house hunting ghosts was one thing.

But the weekend also involved target shooting at a range, which resulted in a whole bunch of shell casings being brought home.  The little guy, being a twelve year old boy and all, brought home a batch of them.  Trophies!  Souvenirs!

If I'd been twelve and had evidence I could show my friends of an afternoon firing an actual .357 Magnum revolver?  Of course I'd have been eager to have proof.  Proof I could show off.

So as they were fed and watered and prepped for school, a little subroutine piped up in my mind.  "Remind him not to take the casings to school to show to friends."  I know from public schools, and, well, I could visualize what might happen if he did what most boys his age would do.

That little voice got drowned out, though, in the chaos of a rainy morning.

And so, as I was picking up the big guy to take him to an orthodontist appointment, I got a call from my wife.

Who'd gotten a call from the principal's office, where my son was, having been found showing off the shell casings.  Teachers and counselors and assistant principals had been involved.  For casings, mind you.  Not live ammunition.  A spent shell casing is inert metal, and weighs nothing.  It's less dangerous than a rock.  Or a fist.  Or a tooth.

But our schools...being responsive to the anxiety of parents...are in that strange place where even a finger or a pointed cruller can get a child in trouble.

"Very serious."  "Potentially threatening."

But because he had a clean record, and is a born schmoozer, he was allowed to return to class, his trophies confiscated.  No suspension.  No expulsion.

No harm, no foul, I figured, winding down the parental defensiveness.  After dropping off my older son, I rolled by the middle school, and picked up the casings from the front desk.

Huh, thought I.  There were only four.  His collection of trophies had been many, some fired, some gathered off the ground.  .22, .38, .308, .45, and 7.62 millimeter.

But there were four.  One tiny .22 rimfire, three Thirty Eight Special.  I figured there were three options.  One, the school had lost some.  This seemed unlikely, given the public school persnicketiness factor.  Two, he'd left some at home.  This seemed unlikely, given my son.  Or Three, the .45 and the 7.62 mm casings were sitting in his pocket the whole time in the office.

When he got home, we had a conversation, after I'd talked him down a bit from his righteous dudgeon.  "A pencil is more dangerous than a casing," he said, speaking truth.  "It's tyranny," he said, getting a little hyperbolic.  We talked a little bit about needing to think about context and the craziness of schools.

As I handed over the casings, he said, "And I wasn't even showing them off.  I was just using them to play some Monte."

Good thing he didn't mention that in the office.