No More Principal Dumping

Today was a day for slicking my hair back into the most staid, school-marmish bun you've ever seen in your entire life. It was fine because I was going to a meeting at my son's school and I wanted to look as serious and severe as possible. Yes, "Operation Get a New Principal" is in full effect! All I need is some little spectacles to complete the whole, "I mean business and I'm going after your ass," look. By the way, if you ever meet me, when I wear a black suit, heels, pearls and I have the bun going on, I'm not playing around.

See, I hate it when school administrators try to act like parents are stupid. Coffee with the principal is not the same as holding a workshop for parents. If your a principal and you're sitting across from me, I'm not going to smile as you whine about how you haven't been able to find anybody to do a newsletter at the school. Saying dumb stuff like that is what makes me say things like, "It sounds like you are having a difficult time motivating your staff to execute your directives." I mean, come on -- seven months into the school year and you can't get a newsletter out the door? We're not even getting into how the school councils haven't seen the budget, parent volunteers are discouraged, there was nothing done for Black History Month, and the beloved math coach was "transferred" under suspicious circumstances. And that's just the tip of the iceberg!

This principal has been an administrator for awhile but she's only been at this school for two years. I've met parents from her prior school and they have described to me how they went through the wringer to get her removed. Joy of joys, she got dumped at our school. It's a huge problem that instead of flat out firing bad principals, the school district just moves them to another school.

The most recent example of this is that of an assistant principal who, although investigated for allegedly molesting a student at Foshay Learning Center AND allegedly pulling a gun on the girl's stepdaddy, got transferred to another school, Markham Middle School in Watts. Can we say lawsuit?

Can you imagine what would go down if this alleged molester was a principal in a wealthier area? There'd be no putting him at a different school and hoping it all blows over. Nope, that principal would be very familiar with the concept of administrative leave!

But, this is all OK when you have children of color, when you have more low-income parents, and when parents are less likely to speak up because they don't always know what their children should be getting. But I know what my kids should be getting and I'm not afraid to demand it.

I can't help but think though about how if we're successful, in our efforts she's just going to get dumped at some other school and then the cycle will start all over again. My wish for the day? No more principal dumping!

A Rarity

Yesterday, I saw things that I almost never see in Los Angeles. No, not concrete freeways and not the BMW in this picture. I see both of those all the time.

Look past the car, past the concrete, above the overpass...what do you see there?

"Just some mountains," you say?

Well, let me tell you, I drive home on the northbound 110 Freeway every day and I rarely see those mountains. It was so clear in Los Angeles yesterday that it was an event worth talking about. Everyone I spoke to was exclaiming, "Wow, can you believe how clear it is?" Yeah, who knew those mountains were there. It was so pretty that I found myself thinking about what the original group of thirteen that founded Los Angeles over 300 years ago must have seen.

Yes, it was so clear that I could see downtown LA from Compton, eleven miles to the south. That NEVER happens. Usually, I can't see downtown until I'm two or three miles away. And then, for those of you who want it all, you want to ski in the morning and go to the beach in the afternoon...I could see snow capped mountains to the east. I could see the mountains in this photo from Watts. I took it while standing on the playground of a school. You all should have seen the kids pointing at the mountains and the snow. I overheard one kindergartener ask another, "Where did those mountains come from?" The other replied, "What's that on top of them?"

What do we usually see instead? Why, absolutely nothing but some pinkish-brown haze in the sky. I like to say that haze is just some fog that hasn't burned off yet. Except that I see that haze almost every single day, no matter what time of day it is. I guess I need to tack an "S" and an "M" onto the beginning of "fog" and get rid of that pesky "F". I think we all know what that spells, right?

If you follow the news at all, you know that Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth won a well-deserved Oscar this past Sunday. I saw it last May, almost a year ago, and wrote about it here. Everybody thinks it's a great film but we all still want the magic pill to make the smog go away.

I wonder if LA will every reclaim her true beauty. I wonder if twenty years from now, folks like me will still be snapping pictures of sights like this, sights they rarely see.