Of Royal Authority, Burning Complaints and Old Acquaintances.

Crowning of a Queen

On his first day as the new principal of Hawthorne Elementary School in Sioux City, Iowa, Jim Mayse walked from classroom to classroom so teachers could introduce him to students. When he ventured into the kindergarten classroom, the teacher announced: "We have a very special guest I want you all to meet."

During the second week of school, Mayes made the same rounds and when he stopped into the kindergarten class, one bright-eyed girl blurted out: "I know her. She's the princess." Little did it matter that Mayes is a man with a full beard.

When Mayes visited the class again not long after, the same little girl came forth with this announcement: "There she is--the queen!"

Mayes thought to himself: "She does seem to have a gender identification problem, but who's to care when she has made me royalty in just a few weeks time!"

Old Acquaintances

Near the end of his interim term as state superintendent in Mississippi in June, Dick Boyd had what might best be described as a "full-circle experience." It occurred when a small group of students from Hattiesburg called on him in his office in the state capital.

The eight high school seniors had been among the 22 youngsters in a pilot class of kindergarten students that Boyd had greeted in December 1984 just after the state launched its first kindergarten program. He then was in his first year as Mississippi's state education chief.

Boyd, a former member of the AASA Executive Committee, has kept a framed newspaper photo of the 5-year-olds surrounding him on all sides on the wall of whatever office he's occupied over the past 13 years. Now he has a companion print of 18-year-olds towering over him, along with their retired kindergarten teacher.

Not So Filthy Language

Albert Johnsen, long-retired superintendent in Godwin Heights, Mich., recalls the day one of his elementary school principals fielded an irate call from a mother while eating lunch at his desk. The mother demanded, "Do you know that one of your teachers called my son 'a dirty elephant?' You need to do something about it!"

The principal, holding back a guffaw, promised to check out the offbeat complaint. What he discovered from the boy's teacher was that the youngster had been a behavioral problem all morning. When the pupils were asked to line up for a walk to the music classroom, the youth failed to do so.

What the teacher actually said was: "Young man, would you please get in line with the others? You have been a disturbing element in the room all morning."

A Burning Complaint

The red-faced mother had a major-league complaint for the high school principal in Tullahoma, Tenn.: Her son's 9th-grade teacher, Ronnie Murray, had supposedly threatened to burn her son by throwing him into a furnace if he did not attend class.

Murray, a first-year teacher who'd been counseled on the importance of keeping an accurate attendance record, denied making any such remark. The mother called him a liar, so the principal summoned her son to the office.

"What exactly did Mr. Murray say to you?" the principal asked.

The boy replied: "He said that if I wasn't in school, I would be dropped from the register."

(Source: Dan Lawson, superintendent, Tullahoma, Tenn.)

A Politically Correct Pebble

With many high schools around the country today re-examining their nick names for offensive stereotypes, one school in southern Illinois has no such worries: the Rock Island Rocks.

A Deep-Pocketed Principal

While he waited for his parents in Principal Ken Evans' office at recently constructed Sally K. Ride Elementary School in Germantown, Md., a 1st-grader asked school secretary Debbie Vermillion, "Did Mr. Evans win the lottery?"

After responding with a negative, Vermillion asked why the boy thought that.

"Then he must have saved his money to get this school," he offered.

Anonymous Opinions

For most of the six years she has served as South Carolina's superintendent of education, Barbara Nielsen has published a bylined column in her agency's monthly newsletter that always ran in the same upper left spot on page 2 with her photo.

But since last winter the column has been stripped of any personal identification and photo. The piece now is simply labeled "Superintendent's Corner" with nary a mention of Nielsen.

Her sudden anonymity as a columnist was forced by a new state law that bans any of South Carolina's constitutional officers other than the governor from using public funds for promotional material that includes their name or photo.

Nielsen's nameless article has spawned a joke, according to Governing magazine, that "the column should at least include an 800 number. It would be for readers who want to find out the identity of the superintendent whose opinions they just read."

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]. E-mail: magazine@ aasa.org. Upon request, names may be withheld in print.