A lot of hot air, aging Rockers and the Lurking principal - Leadership Lite - short news - Brief Article

School Administrator, March, 2002

A Hair-Stopping Experience

Looking for the hottest idea for slowing down speeding vehicle traffic outside your school buildings?

The A.K. Suter Elementary School in Pensacola, Fla., found one unique way. A parent volunteer stands at curbside with an electric hair dryer pointed at oncoming traffic. Drivers uniformly hit the brakes thinking they've just been nabbed by law enforcement.

Principal Beverly Patteson says the local police chief has gotten a big kick out of parent Alan Rooks' idea. Because of all the attention he received, Patteson says, folks now refer to him as "Radar Rooks."

The Great Pretender

In rock 'n' roll annals, northern Iowa is best remembered as the place where Richie Valens, Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper lost their lives in a 1959 place crash.

But it's attaining new musical status as home to Nate and the Moonlighters, an oldies band that includes Lake Mills Community Schools Superintendent Daryl Sherman, who provides vocals. The band, organized by a high school sophomore (Nate), also includes a secondary school principal, 3rd and 5th-grade teachers and a part-time bus driver, all from Lake Mills.

The rockers first gained statewide notice at last year's School Administrators of Iowa conference. They recently performed in a charity event before a sellout crowd of 1,000 at the legendary Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa--the site of Holly's last performance before his death.

Suspicious Minds

Shortly after the school year started, the secretary at Fort Stevens Elementary School in Yelm, Wash., received a letter from a new parent who expressed serious concern about a suspicious-looking man in a long black coat who seemed to be watching kids in front of the school many mornings. The parent wanted the principal to confront this man as a potential safety risk.

Tom Churchill, the principal at Fort Stevens, reports: "My secretary nearly fell out of her chair as she brought the letter in to me to read." Churchill makes it a point to stand outside before school to greet students and parents as they arrive.

He adds: "When I called the parent to explain who I was and why I chose to stand out front each morning, the mother of course was quite embarrassed and apologetic."

The Wrong Pledge

On the one-month anniversary of the terrorist attacks, President Bush asked school children across the country to say "The Pledge of Allegiance" at 2 p.m. EST.

In the Thousand Islands, N.Y., schools, the high school's senior class president and the middle school student council president went on the school district's newly connected TV network to lead the pledge on Channel 54.

However, one of the district's elementary principals somehow got the word to watch Channel 4 and set the schoolwide controls to that channel, allowing the whole school to tune in to see what appeared to be a naked couple frolicking under the covers on an ABC soap opera.

Can He Recall the Combo?

Bill Pope had a fond personal attachment to his senior-year locker at Brentwood High School in Pittsburgh.

So when Pope, now superintendent in Upper St. Clair, Pa., learned that the school planned to destroy and replace all school lockers as part of a renovation project, he asked Brentwood's current superintendent, Anthony Chiappetta, for his old locker door as a memento.

Pope got his wish when Chiappetta presented the door, freshly painted with Brentwood's school colors of blue and gold, at a meeting of Pittsburgh-area superintendents. Pope called it "Absolutely gorgeous, a work of art."

Quotable Quote

"Reading and writing, arithmetic and grammar do not constitute education any more than a knife, fork and spoon constitute a dinner." -- astronomer/mathematician John Lubbock

(Source: Public Education Network electronic newsletter)

Ideals of Yesteryear

Richard Loveall, who directs superintendent searches for the California School Boards Association, came across a definition of the ideal school board member in a 1956 publication of the association: He or she "should have the wisdom of King Solomon and be able to accomplish everything quickly and cheaply, even if he knows nothing about it."