Feet, Knuckles and Dead Body Parts.

A Memorable First Day

In his districtwide letter to colleagues on the start of another school year, Wayne Robertson, superintendent of the Edmonds School District in Lynnwood, Wash., reminisced about opening days of yesteryear.

He recalled vividly the first day of kindergarten for his son Brian (who's now a high school senior). Brian's principal at the time, Bill Evans, probably won't forget that day either.

Deadpans Robertson: "He is probably one of the few principals in the country who has ever had the superintendent's son lose his breakfast on the principal's shoes upon entering the school.

"Our son has always been a bit dramatic. He inherited that from his mother."

Fancy Footwork on the Air

One hopes that technology works better in Illinois classrooms than it did recently during state Superintendent Max McGee's major address on the condition of education. The speech was carried live on local cable TV stations.

McGee was about 15 minutes into his remarks when the picture and sound suddenly disappeared from the cablecast in Springfield. The superintendent was replaced by a sign saying "Shoe Carnival." Unfamiliar faces began to appear on the screen.

The first face was identified later as the senior vice president of a shoe manufacturing company that was about to celebrate a major sales event on 9/9/99. Then a 99-year-old man was shown racing to capture as many dollar bills as he could.

A reporter for the Copley News Service who was watching the speech via cablecast suggested the Shoe Carnival was a lot more entertaining than McGee's report on state achievement standards.

Deadweight Advantage

As a college student back in the late 1950s, educator-in-training Ron Galloway lived in a funeral home and worked as an apprentice embalmer. At night, he hauled bodies here and there. As lingering proof of his unusual past, Galloway has a Poloroid snapshot of himself climbing into an empty casket.

Recently, a columnist at The Atlanta-Journal-Constitution identified the secret of Galloway's success now that he's retired from a 34-year career in education, the last six years as superintendent in Marietta, Ga.: "Anyone who can wrestle a corpse into place can handle a lethargic 15-year-old."

Rapped His Knuckles

Ken Bird has spent nearly all of his 51 years in the Westside Community Schools of Omaha, Neb., with one notable break in service.

Soon after graduating from the West-side schools, he joined the school district in his early 20s. While working as a special education teacher, he interviewed for a position with the state education department.

Unfortunately, the Westside superintendent, H. Vaughn Phelps, first learned of Bird's pending appointment to the state position while reading the agenda a for the next state board of education meeting. Incensed, Phelps stormed into Bird's classroom and asked to speak with him outside.

"He fired me on the spot," recalls Bird. However, Phelps rehired him five years later as a central-office administrator, and today he counts Phelps, who died in 1984 after 24 years as Westside superintendent, as one of his leading mentors.

Short humorous anecdotes, quips, quotations and malapropisms for this column relating to school district administration and school board governance should be addressed to: Editor, The School Administrator, 1801 N. Moore St., Arlington, Va. 22209. Fax: [phone].

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BOARD WATCH

(An occasional collection of unintentionally amusing and offbeat actions of state and local school boards and their members.)

Naughty Naughty

Two members of the Calgary, Alberta, school board were reprimanded recently for a transgression more typically committed by schoolchildren--passing nasty notes.

The board's chairwoman wrote letters of reprimand to her two colleagues after they traded derogatory notes about other board members during public meetings. According to the Calgary Herald, one note apparently accused two board newcomers of being "slow learners," and another mocked the wardrobe of the board chairwoman.

He Still Accepted the Job

The same day Benjamin Demps Jr. signed a two-year contract recently to serve as superintendent of the Kansas City, Mo., schools, a federal judge issued this ominous warning to him:

"I'm sorry to tell you this school board has a bad record, a bad history of meddling in administration, particularly in personnel and contract matters," Judge Dean Whipple told Demps, a retired official with the Federal Aviation Administration.

(Source: The Kansas City Star)

Best of the Board

In a jestful lecture she titled "Salient Qualities of Outstanding Board Leaders," Harvard educator Rosabeth Moss Kanter listed the following desireable traits: delusional, neurotic, obsessive and a little schizophrenic.