New News

Thursday, May 4, 1995

After entering the library at seven, wishing Mary a happy birthday, and parking my bike in the professional room, I was asked by Mary if I wanted to hear the latest news.

My mind boggled. Birthday news? This could be good... happy, at least (as long as it didn’t include Aimee’s practical joke from yesterday: she sent Mary a card [Happy Birthday, YOU decrepit wreck of an old fart... with a thank you inside for use of the "bike rack"... signed by BWalters]... very funny... I will have my revenge... served sweet and cold). Or maybe it was end-of-year news. Summer would be nice. Or... then it dawned on me. Yesterday afternoon, the Leadership Team was to have met with Kurtzmann and his toady GoD to go over the alternate schedule. Was the news related to this?

Yep . . .

They yanked us around again and pulled the new proposed alternative staggered schedule. Not enough student minutes per day was their rationale; it seems minutes of class in session is not the same as instructional minutes (these would be the ones that an actual student is in a seat). The fact that Kurtzmann had been impressed by and had approved of the schedule just a week earlier had been an oversight, I guess. Doesn’t matter now, though. That proposal is as dead as the present schedule. Mary told me there was yet another new proposed schedule in my box as we spoke. Oh, joy. Both of us sighed another sigh and wondered aloud if it wasn’t time to just lie down and give up the fight over the schedule stuff.

And looking at the new and improved proposed schedule, just a few minutes later, I thought so again. Here is the proposal in a nutshell: Monday, Tuesday, and Friday would have six periods of 57 minutes apiece, beginning at eight and ending at quarter-to-three (with a thirty-three minute lunch after fourth period [presently we have a thirty-five minute lunch... and believe me, that seems short]). Wednesday would have four blocks, three 110-minute blocks for periods one, three, and five, with a 24-minute period for video/advisement; Thursday would have four blocks, as well, with periods two, four, and six meeting for 110 minutes, and the 24-minute video/advisement period again. Got that?

Now, presumably, we would be teaching five classes with one preparatory period. That means that on either Wednesday or Thursday, Joe-in-the-Trenches-Teacher would not have a single period off, no real break from eight to quarter-to-three (save the thirty-three minute lunch). This could be seen as a drawback. cough, UNION, cough

Additionally, Kurtzmann had supposedly loved our first alternate staggered schedule for its simplicity (since he had worked at a school with that type of schedule and he said it had worked well until people had dicked with it, adding enough complexity to it so that students were confused. There’s no way he’s going to approve of this complicated behemoth. Not that there’s any chance of it passing through the faculty. With the proposal’s nearly two-hour classes and weekly dose of hey-how-ya-like-workin-without-a-prep-period, any survey checking on staff support will be lucky to garner twenty-five percent, let alone seventy-five. It’ll probably never make it to a vote.

The four-period day is dead, long live the six.

Post-mortems should be scheduled for this weekend, Cinco de Mayo, with Commemorativo served intravenously, but there are still the die-hards who are grasping on to anything that does not resemble a traditional schedule.

I admire their tenacity. I wish I had it.

Even Aimee is drained. She is the mistress of in-her-own-hands discipline; she rarely refers a student to the office. But she wrote out five referrals today: Two for students walking out of class, one for insolence, and two for failure to attend detention. I hate use this simile, but... Like animals, the students sense our fatigue, and they are capitalizing on it, testing us, pushing the outside of the behavioral envelope. And with little or no disciplinary backbone at the front office, the students know that they can pretty much act as they please with impunity.

It could be a very long final six weeks.