Change for the Worse

Yesterday, while on my normal jogging route near the high school, I ran into a few teachers who had come in on the weekend to prepare for the first day on Monday. They knew I was already gone; word travels quickly among us. My departure was just one of the many from Hayward High over the summer. Seven different English teachers left or retired, a couple of math teachers, one history teach, myself and a vice principal. Also, the teachers told me that one man, real pleasant and good-natured and who had been there even when I was a student, abruptly retired just a week before school was to begin. He had just had enough of the “lack of civility” of the high school kids. He certainly never showed his frustration outwardly. It makes one wonder how the rest of us are going if he was burned out. Our football coach split during the summer to work closer to his own home, but his replacement stepped away after only two weeks.

As if all of those staff changes haven’t shaken up the school, HHS is going to have a closed campus for the first time ever. Just last week a long chain-link fence was installed and the school had already replaced its glass doors with silvery metal bars. The school got a paint job last summer, but the color was changed from yellow to gray, of all things. And hall passes are now, get this…orange vests. Every classroom has been given an orange vest that students must wear while outside. I’ve never heard of that in a school before. An aside…I really want to go to the register and order that tomato and mozzarella salad but I don’t want to leave my computer alone. So, anyway, the teachers and I joked that HHS was starting to become a prison but it’s really not a joke.  This stuff has got to have a negative psychological effect on the students.

Okay, everyone around me has food.  GOOD-looking food.  I need to just do this…