Chapter Thirty-Five: When the Cat's Away

Chapter 35: When the Cat’s Away

In early November, The Boss says he wants me to spend a week in Tampa for meetings. When I ask for an agenda, there is none. I explain my dilemma about leaving my school leaderless, but The Boss is unsympathetic. When I tell The Boss I have a meeting with Henry, my public school liaison, scheduled for Wednesday and a Public School principal meeting on Thursday, he compromises and permits me to attend only Monday and Tuesday. I thank him; this is a relief, but even leaving my campus for two days is a frightening prospect. I decide to stop briefly at school on Monday morning before driving two hours to Ebencorp’s headquarters in Tampa.

At 7:00 a.m. Monday I find an email from The Boss. He is angry because we haven’t been inputting all our test scores, grades and attendance on the database Fred, his business manager, created. We’ve discussed this topic before; each time it comes up The Boss seems to have forgotten our past conversations. We’ve discussed that Lynne, my business manager, already records this information in the public school database as mandated contractually. The Boss has access to this database, but he wants Lynne to put the information in Fred’s database. Lynne isn’t opposed, she just wants to know what tasks she can safely eliminate since she can’t input this data and get the rest of her work done. The Boss writes that all the other Prospect schools meet this objective and he expects I will do so immediately.

I want to remind him that we’re the only school that must input the data in the public school database as well as Fred’s database. I want to write we now have nearly three times as many students as any other Prospect school. I want to write that the database Fred created has bugs and Lynne has made several calls to Fred to try to work around the problems. I don’t write any of this. I’ve said it all before. I ask Lynne to do her best at inputting the data The Boss requires.

After the 8:00 morning meeting, Daphne asks to speak with me. She thinks she needs to leave her husband and move back to Santa Fe. She cries. I listen and deliver another pep talk; hopefully loaded with enough positive power to last until I return from Tampa on Wednesday morning.

At 9:00 a.m. Adoncia gets off the bus and collapses. Lynne, my business manager, calls 911 while Rosie, the counselor, tries to ask the semi-conscious Adoncia if she took any drugs. The ambulance arrives. The students are unloading from the busses and running over to the ambulance and paramedics to see what is happening. Great excitement, too much excitement.

As I am packing my briefcase to leave for my meeting in Tampa, Noreen arrives in my office. I tell her to leave; she is not to be on campus when students are present. She wants $42 for the gift wrap I purchased from her son several months ago as part of his school fundraiser. She also asks for her old job back. I could laugh, should laugh, but I don’t. I pay her $42 and tell her to leave.

I get in the car and drive many miles before I can unclench my teeth and loosen my grip on the steering wheel. My encounters with The Boss, Daphne, Adoncia and Noreen are not my favorite way to start a morning. Now I am driving two hours to Tampa for a command performance with The Boss. Somehow I don’t expect this day to improve.

Trying to feel his pain

During the drive, I coach myself on how I will get along with The Boss. I search to find empathy for him. After all, he is the boss of four women and one man all of whom are older than he is and more educated (we all have Masters degrees, one has a PhD). As a former college football player, The Boss is accustomed to using his huge physical presence for effect. This isn’t effective with five principals who care about what he says and aren’t intimidated by height and weight. As a black man who grew up in Florida, The Boss’s poor communication skills and lack of mathematical acumen are no doubt a byproduct of an inferior education in recently desegregated schools. I craft the story of The Boss to try to find the patience and understanding I have for my students and their parents and apply it to him. I see the irony in this situation. As a pro-affirmative action liberal, I have been burdened with a boss who may have earned his job based not on his qualifications but on his skin color. Somewhere a right wing conservative is laughing.

If The Boss were white, it would be so much easier. I would immediately go to his boss, Clyde, to discuss my concerns. But since The Boss is black, to even hint he isn’t fit for the job, smacks of racism. Last week Lynne, my business manager, was reading one of The Boss’s difficult to decipher emails and asking me to help her. She wondered aloud how he got promoted and suggested it’s because he is black. Jumping to the defense of affirmative action I pointed out that it was valid for Clyde to want a black man to run this program since over 50% of our students are black males. In frustration I added that I just wished Clyde had picked a smart black man. Florida-born Lynne inquired, with some sarcasm, whether I knew any. Facing off against her racism I assured her I do. Clearly she doesn’t think she does. Maybe Clyde doesn’t think he knows any either.

My conversation with Lynne leaves me frustrated and unsettled. I feel I have crossed over into a parallel universe, a universe where until recently, segregated schools insured most black people would receive an inferior education. I think of the smart black men I know - Brendan the accountant, Richard the counselor, Bryce the attorney, Syd the doctor, and Raymond the social worker/therapist - and suddenly, desperately I want to make Lynne see their faces and experience their brilliance. But my words are inadequate to the task and when I finally surrender, I feel I have been disloyal to my black friends.

My kind thoughts and good intentions toward The Boss fade fast in his presence. There are no goals or objectives for this meeting. Team bonding, which is usually somewhere on the agenda of such meetings, is scuttled. The Boss runs the meeting like a football coach with a losing team and some wild players.

Lacking an agenda for this multi-day fest, The Boss collars various Ebencorp employees and convinces them to come “shoot the breeze” with us. Good old Let’s rap Leighton from HR, asks what we want to know. The risk management guy comes in and delivers the same spiel we all heard last August. Cell phones ring. Each of us has left behind a school with students and problems and no one to solve them. (I get a call from Rosie about Adoncia. The hospital called and she is fine. They don’t know why she lost consciousness.) At lunchtime a discussion ensues to determine which restaurant to visit. The Boss announces he will not be going to lunch. In my continuing struggle to understand The Boss, I take the cue and follow his lead. Maybe he and I can bond during the lunch break, but he goes in his office and shuts the door.

The other four principals are late back from lunch. The Boss, the angry football coach, goes on a rampage. This team is not showing any respect. His examples include leaving cell phones on, returning from lunch late and leaving the room to go to the bathroom. My fellow principals and I are speechless and dumbfounded. Post tirade, The Boss invites a woman who writes grants for Ebencorp’s residential programs to talk to us. Unfortunately, she explains, she doesn’t have time to write grants for Prospect Schools. I have to go to the bathroom, but I don’t dare leave the room.

The Boss doesn’t adjourn the meeting until after 6:00. Most of the other principals have booked motel rooms in Tampa, but my budget is too tight and besides I live only two hours away. It takes me closer to three hours with the rush hour traffic, then I have to turn around and do it again the next morning.

By the time I get back to school Wednesday morning my desk is piled high with urgent messages and a line quickly forms at my desk. People want to complain, tattle and ask for help.

While you were out…

Daphne wants to schedule time to meet with me after school. She says she’ll need my undivided attention. I have a hunch she wants to tell me she is quitting. I’d like to make myself unavailable to hear that news.

Stone needs to vent and snitch. He had surgery on his foot Monday and while he was out, some combination of staff members (Billie, Jana and Rosie) used his computer. He can tell because some of the settings have been changed. I express sympathy. He threatens to password protect everything on the computer. I remind him the computers are school property. I don’t achieve the goal of calming him; he leaves agitated and shaking. Lynne predicts a heart attack.

Billie, the PE teacher, comes to tell me it was Jana who used Stone’s computer.

Jordan, who teaches on Daphne’s team, wants to talk with me about Seth’s situation. When he made his weekly calls home last night, Seth’s mother, in the wheelchair, confessed that Seth, like his father, beats her. Jordan spoke with the Deputy who plans to send an officer to Seth’s house tonight. Seth, who believes he’ll end up in prison, seems determined to make that prophecy a reality.

Counselor Rosie tells me Tyryona (formerly known as “dollar girl”) kissed a boy on the bus on the way home Monday. The bus driver told Tyryona’s guardian. The guardian was not pleased. She spoke severely to Tyryona about how her increasingly difficult behavior is leaving the guardian with no options but to relinquish her to DCF. Tyryona became very upset, began to punch herself, ran in the bathroom and sprayed a bottle of perfume all over her body in an attempt to poison herself. Tyryona was Baker-Acted yesterday.

Jana comes to tell me it was Rosie who used Stone’s computer.

Stephanie says she wants to graduate several students from Orientation. I ask her for the worksheet we agreed would contain all the data needed before moving students out - pre-test scores, proof a planner was purchased, date child arrived at Prospect etc. We have this same discussion every week. Stephanie often “forgets” about the sheet and just gives me a scribbled list of names of students she wants to move out. I go down her list, she admits most haven’t been tested yet and don’t have planners. I won’t move them until we meet those objectives. She gives me the “I think you’re mean” look and leaves.

The Deputy comes to tell me that yesterday while I was in Tampa, several girls accused Kembrall, a student in Jordan’s class, of unwanted sexual touching. TobyBeth, the troubled girl with the illiterate father, is among the complainants. Yesterday’s Deputy launched a full investigation and made out a report but he felt there wasn’t enough proof to arrest Kembrall. All the accusers are white girls; Kembrall is a large, fourteen year old black boy. I ask the Deputy if I should be outraged that several girls have been attacked at school and should suspend the molester, or should I be repulsed that my girls have pulled a “Mockingbird” on this innocent black boy and punish these false accusers? The Deputy says since he wasn’t here and he wasn’t the Deputy who investigated the allegations and wrote the report, he can’t say, but he suggests I leave it alone. The parents of the girls have been notified that if they want to press charges they can do so. The Deputy adds: “In a school where everyone is a liar, how do you know who to believe?”

Corinna from Title One calls to tell me I can’t use the Title One money for the books I want. She chants in a sing-song voice that I must remember, Title One money is to “supplement not supplant, supplement not supplant.” Apparently I need to write this grant implying I’m supplementing when in fact I have nothing to supplement.

While I was in Tampa, the Risk Management guy from Ebencorp left a message (I’m not sure why he didn’t talk to me while I was in Tampa....), about busses and insurance. For months I have been begging Risk Management to insure only those busses we actually own and lease. It seems so logical and obvious to me, but this voice message tells me Risk Management has made a decision: the insurance policy year started in mid-September and someone (no one seems to know who) counted twelve busses on my campus, so I must pay insurance on twelve busses. The fact that I don’t now have and never did have twelve busses is immaterial. I don’t know whether I am insuring someone else’s busses or imaginary busses. Money I could have used for salaries or books goes to Ebencorp.

I also have a message from Henry, my public school liaison. I had asked his permission to have a half-day of school on the day before Thanksgiving. Henry’s message says I can’t schedule early release for the Wednesday before Thanksgiving since the public school has a full day and it would be unfair if the alternative students leave early.

I like and trust Henry, but his voice message burns me. Since when has fairness between the public school and Prospect ever been of concern to anyone? I want to call Henry back and tell him about “unfair.” I want to scream about the obscene unfairness inherent in the whole concept of a separate school for “bad kids.”

But of course, I don’t call Henry. I am not usually shy about making waves, but with my less than ideal relationship with The Boss, I am clinging to whatever harmony I can muster in my relationship with Henry. But like the Colorado river slowly carving its way into the rocks, Henry’s “no half-day” message erodes a bit more from our relationship. I slowly exhale and look at my watch. I don’t have time to digest what I missed, it is 9:00 a.m.: time to go meet the busses!