LETTERS.

Frustrated By Ongoing Threats

I found much relevance in the Focus article ("The Central-Office Role in School Emergencies") by Pegi McEvoy and Cathy Reineke in the November issue.

Our school system of 73,000 students experienced more than 30 bomb threats during the first two months of the school year and more than 30 such incidents during the final 2 1/2 months of the last school year.

In most cases, the threats are false, though in a few instances unknown devices have been found on school property, and one did cause a small fire in one of our schools. We, too, have tried a multilevel emergency management system that involves all of our key players (police, fire, rescue, state's attorney, sheriff, juvenile services, etc.). We have established a good plan and our responses are appropriate and timely and ensure safety for students and staff.

However, our dilemma is that these incidents continue to occur, sometimes two or three times a day at different schools. (Our district operates more than 130 sites.) I wonder what suggestions readers in other districts that have experienced similar repeated problems might have? I would greatly appreciate hearing from them as we obviously are very frustrated by our inability to stop the incidents. We lose valuable instructional time, the incidents are a cost to county taxpayers and they are an inconvenience to students, parents and staff.

Jane Doyle 

Public Information Officer,

Anne Arundel County Public Schools,

Annapolis, Md.

Vital Importance of School Law

Your magazine is to be congratulated for the timely issue on education law (November 1997).

For better or worse, knowledge of the law has become crucial and central to the ability to administer our schools. One need only think of the $1 million damage settlement in the Nabonzy case about gay harassment last year. The court was very clear that liability flowed from what the administrator should have known the law to be.

If principals and superintendents are to be successful, they must understand legal precedent. The reverse is also true: If attorneys are to be successful representing school administrators, they must understand the day-to-day realities of schools.

Franklin Pierce Law Center has recognized these needs and offers an annual conference on cutting-edge legal issues, summer education law courses and beginning this summer two advanced degrees, a master's in education law and certificate of advanced graduate study in education law.

We all have much to learn. Thanks for the informative magazine.

Sarah E. Redfield

Professor of Law and Director,

Education Law Institute,

Franklin Pierce Law Center,

Concord, N.H.

Classroom Issues Made Real

I am in a master's program at the University of North Dakota at Grand Forks working on a degree in educational leadership. One of our assignments in an educational law course last semester was to read articles on school law and react to them. I chose the article by Phillip Corkill and Robert Hendricks ("Learning the Law and Loving the School Attorney Less") in the November issue of The School Administrator.

What was fun was reading references in their article about issues we had discussed in our class.

Nancy L. Wisness

Superintendent of Schools,

McKenzie County Schools,

Watford City, N.D.

My Advisee Says Thanks

I enjoyed the lead article by Phillip Corkill and Robert Hendricks in the November issue. It was particularly helpful and timely for one of my doctoral students, a superintendent who is completing his dissertation on the school district-attorney relationship.

Percy A. Zirkel

Iacocca Professor of Education,

College of Education,

Lehigh University,

Bethlehem, Pa.

A Reassuring Message

I congratulate AASA Executive Director Paul Houston on his outstanding column, "Promoting the Public Good Through Common Schools," in the November issue.

Given the proliferation of articles on charter schools in the August issue, I thought perhaps the fox might have gotten inside the henhouse.

Louis Wildman

Professor of Educational Administration, Advanced Educational Studies Department,

School of Education,

California State University, Bakersfield, Bakersfield, Calif.

Right Idea, Wrong Source

Re: the Focus article ("Advice to a New Superintendent: Act Like Elvis, Think Like Cicero") in the January issue.

According to my aging but presumably accurate edition of Webster's Biographical Dictionary, it was Cato the Elder, not Cicero, who said incessantly, "Carthage must be destroyed." More exactly, the statement was: Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam ("For the rest, I vote that Carthage should be destroyed").

The error is more subtle than it appears at first. Cato's line has endured through the centuries, not as an example of can-do determination, but as an example of harshness and vindictiveness. Carthage, Rome's once-formidable enemy (Hannibal ravaged Italy for 15 years while Cato was a young man), had by most accounts been defeated and humbled by the Second Punic War, and it consequently posed little apparent threat to Rome other than in Cato's vengeful imagination.

Here's my point: Cicero is a good role model for educators, but he didn't say what you attributed to him. Cato did say it, but he's not a good role model for educators.

Rob Ehrgott

Assistant Publications Manager,

Pi Lambda Theta Publications,

Bloomington, Ind.