Comedy Starts Early and Ends Late in These Homes

School Administrator, April, 2000

Late-Night Relief

Scene: The home of Keith Spurgeon, superintendent in Mount Vernon, Ind.

Dramatis Personnae: Spurgeon and his son Chris, a 1st grader.

Action: After saying his bedtime prayers, Chris asks, "Dad, we were talking in class today, and is there something you and mom do at night that I need to know about before I get married?"

Spurgeon, momentarily stunned, wonders if it's already time for his "birds and bees" speech. "But he's only in 1st grade!" he says to himself. "What is this teacher doing in her classroom?"

He asks his son, "What do you mean?"

"Well," replies Chris, "you and mom are the Easter bunny, aren't you?"

Spurgeon says he was never so relieved to fess up to anything in his life.

Sloppy Communication

Rather amazingly, as Lloyd Snow recalls, he made it through his first day as the new superintendent in Sulphur Springs, Okla., without fielding a single phone call about a parent upset over a child's assigned teacher, a bus problem or a maintenance breakdown. But his luck ran out at bedtime. The caller did not disappoint.

"Are you the new damn boss down at that damn school?" a gruff voice asked. "I want to know about that slop at the school."

Assuming the caller was upset about the quality of the school lunch his child had been served, Snow politely launched into an explanation of state and federal nutritional guidelines, hygiene requirements and cafeteria supervision. The caller said he had no interest in such matters.

"I've lived in this community for 30 years, put five kids through this school, and for all those years I've gotten the cafeteria slop each day for my pigs until you arrived!"

Snow assured the local hog farmer that slop disposal was not a matter that had crossed his desk yet, but it would be priority No. 1 the next day.

Early to Rise

Raymond Yeagley, superintendent in Rochester, N.H., was rising early and staying up late to put the finishing touches on his doctoral studies. His four-year-old son Jake took notice.

At 5 o'clock one winter morning, Yeagley's wife Susan spotted Jake working studiously at his father's desk. His concentration was total and his dedication to the task at hand obvious. When Jake was asked what he was doing, he looked up and said, "I'm coloring my bizzercation."

Destined for Popularity

With the rapid growth of dot-com sites on the Internet serving every conceivable need and interest, it should come as no surprise that a leading weather forecasting firm has developed a nationwide database of school closings.

Cancellations.com is the brainchild of AccuWeather, which provides forecasts for thousands of broadcast stations. Thousands of schools from Pe Ell, Wash., to Washington, D.C., have signed up for the free service, which allows an Internet user anywhere to plug in a school district name to find out whether school is closed as soon as the decision is made.

Superintendents, using closely held passwords, can post a closing decision from a home computer.

"You can roll out of bed, see if the cancellation is there, then roll back over and go back to sleep," Craig Younkman, superintendent of Lake Orion, Mich., schools told the Detroit Free Press.

A Big-Boy Fascination

If Doug Rutan didn't have a swell job as superintendent of the 2,700 student Kuna, Idaho, Joint School District, he'd probably be behind the wheel of a school bus. He's crazy about them.

Rutan has a collection of toy school buses and is in the midst of spearheading the restoration of a battered 1937 International school bus, owned by the local historical foundation. He earned his bus license four years ago and pitches in when a regular bus operator calls in sick. On occasion, he also drives Kuna students to out-of-town events, such as sports and band competitions and drama festivals.

"At first, the board thought it would take away from my job," Rutan says. "But now they realize it's one of the more important parts of my job."

Inimitable Ending

Sixty-five years after he entered kindergarten at the same concrete, two-story school, Ruben Zacarias ended his lengthy career in the Los Angeles Unified School District by reading Green Eggs and Ham to a kindergarten class on his final day of work.

"This is where it all started, and this is where I want it to end," Zacarias, 71, told The Los Angeles Times as he bowed out of the superintendency.

Short humorous anecdotes, quips, quotations and malapropisms for this column relating to school district administration and school board governance should be addressed to: Editor, The School Administrator, 1801 N. Moore St., Arlington, Va. 22209-1813. Fax: 703-528-2146.