Flutterby™! : Two more anecdotes

Next unread comment / Catchup all unread comments User Account Info | Logout | XML/Pilot/etc versions | Long version (with comments) | Weblog archives | Site Map | | Browse Topics

Two more anecdotes

2008-03-17 21:55:50.978548+00 by ebradway 4 comments

Last week an honor-roll student and president of his student council was suspended for buying Skittles (the rainbow of color). This week, a 15-year-old girl gets suspended for stopping an out-of-control bus full of school children.

School administrators can be total morons.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Current Events Public Transportation ]

comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):

#Comment Re: made: 2008-03-17 23:21:14.700867+00 by: meuon [edit history]

Inter-student commerce is wrong? After years of pimping our kids to sell candy to raise money for schools, bands, athletics, girl scouts.. etc.. - it's now wrong. I agree, it should heave been wrong all along for schools to do this. I got in trouble with Ryan's and Annie's grade school Principal (now retired) cause they was supposed to be pushing coupon books and candy for Signal Mtn Schools. I went to the school and gave them $100 "because they needed it" and gave the Principal $10.00, cause I estimated he got a 10% spiff for candy sales and told them to stop wasting my, and the kids, time. This is the same school system I had to threaten another principal with a Channel 9 news crew if the computers that had been donated to the "special needs" classes weren't returned immediately (I didn't care that the admin staff didn't have as nice of systems, not my choice of causes).

But for it to be wrong for the kids, wrong enough to be suspended? These people have no clue. By the way, my permanent record shows in Junior high I got suspended for 3 days for getting in a fight (one of many) and knocking the kid out, cold. Yeah, I was a pansy nerd in slacks (my mom would not let me wear jeans), but I survived Okinawa as a small kid. Putting an afro pick in a guys scalp in a fight, 1 day. I also got suspended in high school several times: Making Amyl Nitrate in chemistry class: 1 day, Making thermite in chemistry class and setting it off in the parking lot, 3 days. Doing donuts in the parking lot, 1 day.. throwing snowballs at my sister, 1 day. I forget the rest, but it was a whole lot better than buying or selling candy, that's just embarrassing.

As for the bus, say "tssk tssk", but also "thanks for saving the bus".

#Comment Re: made: 2008-03-18 12:03:55.796457+00 by: m

Zero tolerance = zero applied intelligence = zero authority

So why do school administrators make more than the minimum wage?

#Comment Re: made: 2008-03-18 12:50:52.463488+00 by: JT

m: because if they make a few cents more than minimum wage, it means they can make a few cents more than the teachers do.

#Comment Re: made: 2008-03-18 14:43:29.482152+00 by: m

JT,

I can't speak for your locale, but pay for teachers where I lived until a year ago was higher than mean and median pay for individuals working for private industry with equivalent experience and education. That was absolute annual pay, not adjusted for work hours, pension values, summer work that teachers get, or anything else. The potential top end was certainly higher in private industry, but by definition very few individuals make it to those heights in any organization.

The pay difference was sufficient that I did some part time evening school science teaching to help pay the bills when I was starting a family. Part time night school teachers did not get the pay that regular teachers did.

I have not had occasion to analyze teaching salaries in my new home area, but they seem to be more than competitive from my impressions and more formally, what I saw in a table of impugned income by occupation, experience and education for this area.