Column: The good and not so good old days
Former Paso Robles Joint Unified School District Superintendent Curt Dubost.
– My initial columns have been a bit nostalgic regarding the way things “used to be” in schools. This mirrors somewhat the national debate over making things “Great Again” as opposed to “Never Going Back.” One would hope this is not a binary choice and that we can learn from the past and maintain positive traditions while not repeating hurtful mistakes.
Over thirty years ago I left a large suburban high school in the San Diego area to return to Adelaida, my place of birth, and become principal of Templeton High School. That first year the THS senior class had maybe fifty members while the high school at which I had most recently worked graduated almost ten times that number each year. The two schools were different in many ways. THS was not large enough to field more than one athletic team per season per gender.
There weren’t enough students with exceptional academic ability to offer a full range of college prep courses nor electives. We struggled to have a band. The first soccer team was coed so we could get enough players, and the fastest player as I recall was a girl. That which Templeton did offer was done well, but extracurricular programs and school culture were dominated by eight-man football, FFA, and to a lesser extent girls softball. Many academic subjects were of necessity taught by teachers who did not have expertise in all of the academic disciplines to which they were assigned.
The construction of Twin Cities Hospital and the development of new subdivisions including wealthier enclaves like Hidden Valley had begun to transform Templeton. Many of the new parents sought to transfer their students to neighboring districts. It was my job as the new principal to support the many positive traditions of Templeton while making it a school responsive to the expectations of the newly arrived. The school was not fully accredited and had very low test scores.
Very early in my tenure, I believe it was in 1987, there was vandalism including harming some animals on Ag Hill where the FFA school farm was located. I saw this as an opportunity to “take the bull by the horns”, so to speak, and make sure the students and community knew there was a “new sheriff in town”. I promised to find the culprits and make sure they were punished severely for such egregious misconduct. I offered a reward and enthusiastically led the investigation.
The next day several student leaders came to me and basically said, “Look, you’re new here. You don’t need to worry about this. We take pride in our school. We’ll find out who did it and it will be taken care of by us. We don’t need you defending our school on something like this. Tunnel justice,” was mentioned.
There was no more vandalism.
I was impressed but also concerned. The likelihood of unintended and indefensible consequences from “tunnel justice” was obvious and predictable. I applauded the school pride but worried what other directions “Tunnel Justice,” might take. (The tunnel referred to is a walkway under the road between the high school and the junior high by the district office where “ things “ often happened.)
Later that same first year Homecoming Week arrived and at a pep assembly, I was initiated to a long-practiced traditional freshman class fundraiser. The gym was set up as a “freshman slave” sale and kids were auctioned off. It was very realistic and sought to simulate a slave sale. The most popular kids were auctioned first and fetched more money, while the less popular kids were lumped together as a “blue light special” like at K-Mart, and sold in a group. The last freshmen huddled together to be “sold” for pennies.
The only black member of the faculty was clearly disturbed but did not come to me for fear it might cost her her job. When I spoke with her, however, she expressed her very real concern. Clearly that extended to kids who did not fit the stereotypical Templeton student profile.
Following a brief attempt at compromise with a “Freshman Friend” sale, I ended it permanently. There wasn’t any way to make “selling” kids OK, and to continue it in any way was to make the horrors of slavery in the past and the demeaning of kids in the present somehow acceptable and even profitable.
Special education is another area of concern. Anyone who has seen the movie Forrest Gump will remember that Forrest’s single mom, played by Sally Field, was told by the local school principal that they had no place for Forrest in the school. She was sure she could change his mind. That night, while Forrest waited outside, the principal left the Gump house saying, “Your Momma must really want you to go to school “ and Forrest was enrolled.
To right those wrongs special ed regulations are now incredibly costly yet often ineffective and demand reform. More on that in a future column.
For now, I plan to vote for candidates at all levels of governance who want to honor and maintain positive historical traditions that are inclusive not discriminatory nor hurtful while remembering why reforms were made and to seek better new solutions.
– Former Paso Robles Joint Unified School District Superintendent Curt Dubost
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