Cheese sandwiches, rich cookies and dirty Jerseys.

He Didn't Do It, Honest

During his time as superintendent in Riverview, Mich., Charles Kromer recalls an irate parent barging into his outer office and rudely announcing aloud to his secretary "I'm really upset about my daughter's program and I want to talk to someone right now!"

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The secretary came into Kromer's office and said, "There's a parent really upset and mad and I think you need to talk to her right away."

The superintendent went to the outer office, introduced himself and asked what he could do to help. She exclaimed, "Are you the person responsible for the pregnant girls in this school?"

"No, but I am in charge of their educational program."

That explanation, oddly enough, was enough to satisfy the complainant.

Say Cheese and Receive Dollars

The Chula Vista, Calif., Elementary School District has found a menu item that's a surefire bet to lower the mounting debt in the school cafeteria: the cheese sandwich on wheat.

After Chula Vista parents ran up a tab of almost $300,000 in overdue lunch money while ignoring collections notices sent home with students, the school district realized the unpaid $1.50 lunch tab over time was amounting to more than small change.

So now the district gives pupils whose lunch accounts have dipped into the red a free cheese sandwich (plus milk) every day, no doubt contributing to much grumbling until morn and dad remember to fork over some money to replenish the lunch account.

By the end of the school year in June, the lunchroom debt had dwindled to $80,000.

A Shadow Over His Cookies

Delvin Lockard, a school board member in Pennsylvania's Northern Cambria district, had hoped to make Groundhog Day special for K-4 pupils by giving them cookies cut to the form of Punxsutawney Phil.

That was until he ran afoul of a new state wellness regulation that prevents junk food from being served in schools.

"The recipe he submitted didn't meet the criteria for the cafeteria," Superintendent Thomas Estep told The TribuneDemocrat. He said the cookie was determined by the food service contractor to be 37 percent fat, which put it over the limit of 35 percent fat.

Lockard, who ironically voted in favor of the new wellness program a year earlier, had this to say: "There's nothing healthier for a kid than the smile they get with a groundhog cookie."

He said he hoped to get the school board to reconsider its adoption of the policy.

Roadside Test Prep

A test examiner got a flat tire en route to Westover Elementary School in Silver Spring, Md., at a most unfortunate time--the week of Maryland School Assessments in reading and math. When she called AAA for roadside assistance, she identified herself as a teacher who needed immediate help because of the start of testing at 9:30 a.m.

The dispatcher promised to do what she could. The teacher was pleasantly surprised when a service truck pulled up only a few minutes after she got off the phone call.

"When the man from AAA arrived ... he told her that he knew how important the testing was because he had two younger sisters taking the tests this week," recounts Pat Kelly, Westover's principal. "I think AAA's new motto should be AAA supports MSA!"

(Source: Bulletin, Montgomery County Public Schools, Rockville, Md.)

Who'll Stop the Rain?

Last fall when Michigan endured unusually heavy amounts of rainfall, Bill Coale, the superintendent of the Western School District in Parma, Mich., took a phone call from a parent with a complaint. Seems her son in middle school was getting "too dirty" during football practice on the school's field.

Coale didn't have much of an answer for the laundry query, but he recalled for colleagues the advice he remembers receiving as a first-year superintendent from an elder: "We couldn't make this stuff up!"

Short humorous anecdotes, quips, quotations and malapropisms for this column relating to school district administration should be addressed to: Editor, The School Administrator, 801 N. Quincy St., Suite 700, Arlington, VA 22203.