He does care

A couple of days ago I was lamenting the loss of Madison's high school principal last year. She was part of the county early retirement program, and despite the administration moving her to our school to bring it up a notch and to oversee the arrival of the International Baccalaureate program, she was held to her enrollment in DROP and she retired. I felt it was a huge loss. She was always very prominent around the school talking to the kids, encouraging them, listening to them, and laughing with them. She was outside at arrival and pick up and always around when the school had meetings and functions greeting parents and shaking hands. She brought the school to an A grade in Florida's ridiculous school grading system and generally made us all feel like we were part of a community.

Her replacement, our current principal, is not so personable. I have seen the man one time since school started this year and that was at the back to school information night. Since then I've not seen hair nor hide of him nor have I heard from him. His biggest accomplishment has been changing the dress code for the school. Girls, not boys, are required to wear pants or skirts that reach their knees, blah, blah, blah. He doesn't even record the phone messages that are sent out each Sunday to parents, instead giving that job to an assistant principal. He is rarely in the hallways during school, and I've never seen him out and about at pick-up.  He does write a brief letter for the school newsletter and he does make some of the morning announcements, always cheering on the school and insisting the school is making the leaders of tomorrow.

So I was whining some about all of this to my mother on Wednesday. I would appreciate a principal who gets out among the people, especially the kids. I find it odd that we would go from one extreme to the other, and I wonder whose bright idea it was to hire this invisible man. Then I came home to find the object of my disdain on my message machine. Apparently there had been rumors of school violence planned in several schools for Friday and our principal wanted to assure us.

Nice of him to get involved. His voice was strong and he didn't stutter in reading his script. While the message, which has been emailed to me daily since the phone message, was well written and meant to reassure I still felt our principal thought the whole thing annoying, but then again I don't really know the man. At least he felt this important enough to lend his voice to. I'm hoping this will be the beginning of a new year of more exposure and hopefully it will be for mundane reasons as well as important ones.