The Last Things You'll Want to Hear - list presented at AASA national conference of things school administrators do not want to hear - Humor - Brief Article

School Administrator, June, 2001

Words Worth Missing

AASA Executive Director Paul Houston compiles a series of offbeat lines for a David Letterman-style Top 10 list, which the association prints on a commemorative T-shirt at each year's AASA national conference.

This year's Houston special: 10 things a school administrator doesn't want to hear. They are:

* The auditor just arrived with the state police.

* The board finished your evaluation last night at the "Dew Drop Inn."

* The union president called with another good management idea.

* A copy of your college transcript is posted on the high school Web site.

* The board president suggests that you may be ahead of your time.

* The state test results are in and Channel 5 is on the phone.

* Your job is listed on the AASA Job Bulletin.

* Butterfly ballots will be used for the next board election.

* The board is worried that your golf game is the only score they see improving.

* Mike Wallace is waiting to see you.

Smiling Dimples

After completing his round at AASA's annual golf tournament in Orlando, Fla., Bryan Blavatt, superintendent of the Boone County schools in Florence, Ky., shared his secret for improving his fairway drives.

"I try to envision my balls to look like my board members," the superintendent says. "If I painted their faces on my golf balls, I'd have a long drive every time."

Lock That Laptop

In quiet moments inside your office, do you find it tempting to surf the Web for new car deals or your next vacation hotspot?

The Indianapolis Star, ever suspicious of what goes on behind closed doors, reviewed computer records in 49 school districts. The newspaper found some decidedly non-educational Web site addresses on the computers in superintendents' offices. These included www.tomthedancingbug.com, the home page of a comic strip, and www.near-death.com, a site about near-death experiences. One superintendent discovered his teen-ager had visited pornographic sites on his district-issued laptop.

"I think I'll have to keep a padlock on it from now on," the superintendent told the newspaper.

A Weathered Relic

Carroll Johnson, an emeritus member of AASA who lives in Longboat Key, Fla., totes around one pretty yellowed piece of paper: a cancelled $5 check he'd written on Oct. 22, 1946, for the full cost of his first AASA membership dues.

Johnson was a superintendent until 1969, then a professor at Columbia's Teachers College until 1978 and a superintendent search consultant until the early 1990s.

Shedding Bird Feathers

Roger LaBonte probably was the happiest fellow in attendance at the Michigan Association of School Administrators' breakfast gathering at the AASA conference in Orlando this winter. LaBonte finally got to unload The Bird on another unsuspecting superintendent.

The Bird is a 2-foot-tall plastic pelican that has been passed on ceremoniously at each of the past 36 AASA national conferences from one deserving Wolverine State superintendent to another. LaBonte, superintendent of the Calhoun Intermediate School District in Marshall, Mich., selected Dennis Harbour, superintendent of the Houghton-Portage schools in Houghton, located in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, for this year's honor.

Under terms of the wacky award, Harbour must display The Bird in a prominent location in his office and tend to its care and feeding over the next 12 months.

Dusty Diplomas

The Campbell County School District in Gillette, Wyo., will graduate some of the country's oldest students this spring--most of whom will be older than anyone on the faculty and administration.

The district's two high schools are offering the diplomas to veterans of World War II and the Korean War who left for overseas duty before completing their high school studies.

The school board made one stipulation to qualify: the veterans must write about their postwar experiences.

A Novel Excuse

Richard Vindigni, a New York City police officer assigned to the Youth Division, visits elementary schools to present an anti-drug, anti-violence program.

He worked with a teacher recently who received the following note: "My son ... couldn't attend to school on Thursday and Friday because my wife was in the hospital and now we have a new baby it's a girl. We are very sorry about it. Maybe is not excuse but it happened.

(Source: The New York Times)