Wanted: Grammar Brushups in High Places.

Hot Potatoes 

Dan Quayle, famous for his classroom gaffe over a common vegetable while serving as vice president, is not the only public servant who could stand to use a spelling refresher from time to time.

A recent mass mailing from the U.S. Department of Education to every elementary school in the country was addressed "Attention: Principle."

And the department's proofreaders were sure to be scurrying for cover after someone discovered 25,000 copies of the new Education Department General Administrative Regulations, or EDGAR, were printed with a misspelling of Roderick R. Paige on the inside cover. His last name was lacking the "i."

Gubernatorial Grammar

A 4th-grader in Georgetown, Ky., who wrote to Gov. Paul Patton as part of a class project received an unexpected lesson in the state of the Kentucky's educational system.

Patton's letter to the youngster was riddled with spelling errors, in one case inserting an "i" between the "Kent" and the "ucky" in the state's name. The letter went on to explain that Patton's favorite "subkect" in school was math.

The letter concluded that the governor's biggest achievement has been improving education in Kentucky (or is that Kentiucky?).

A Comma Malady 

When he was superintendent in Tulsa, Okla., Gordon Cawelti was in the midst of a teacher termination hearing that was continuing late into the night. Members of the Tulsa school board and the teachers' union were getting testy.

Cawelti had already testified about the teacher's lack of lesson planning and her regular use of bad grammar. Now it was the principal's turn on the stand. It quickly became apparent that he too had problems with the King's English as he lapsed into noticeable errors of speech.

At this point, the board president leaned over to Cawelti to ask why the district was bringing a case about bad grammar to the board when the principal suffered from the same malady. To this, the superintendent replied: "Well, sir, when you get to be his age and your grammar is bad, there is not much can be did about it."

Honoring the Veep

Casper, Wyo., can't exactly lay claim to a wealth of luminaries, which helps to explain a recent effort to rename Natrona County High School to honor Vice President Richard B. Cheney, a 1959 graduate.

The only problem: The county school board has a 23-year-old prohibition against naming schools after individuals.

The board has offered a consolation prize--naming the high school's athletic field, currently without title, the Cheney Alumni Field. But some in the community are underwhelmed by that alternative. One supporter of renaming the school told The Wall Street Journal: "It is run-down. It's an old, old track that they don't even use."

The school has begun to raise funds to top the playing surface with a rubber-and-fake-grass concoction called Astroplay.

A Captive Work Force

South Dakota Gov. William Janklow found a unique way to deal with the ambitious goal of wiring every school in his state's 176 districts for high-speed Internet access.

Recognizing the challenge of running fiber-optic conduits to isolated locations, Janklow authorized inmates from the state's prisons to do the wiring. They were given journeyman electrician licenses while working 10-hour days, six days a week and earning $3 an hour.

Janklow told Education Technology News that the convicts behaved themselves except in one instance when two inmates were found blending in with high school football players at a team cookout.

New Vocabulary

As publications editor for the Journalism Education Association, Bradley Wilson catches all the latest lingo in use among high school students. So as a service to his colleagues in the student activities field, Wilson recently compiled some of the phrases in vogue.

His helpful translations included these:

Big pimpin: acting cool

Bounce: to leave

Hezie: crazy

Let's boot: time to leave

Snap: wow

A Name Game

School board members in Downey, Calif., know how to keep a good secret.

To honor Superintendent Ed Sussman on his 60th birthday recently, the board sprung a pleasant surprise on the 20-year district employee: the renaming of South Middle School as the Edward A. Sussman Middle School.

Sussman, who has been Downey superintendent since 1986 and has no plans to retire, was completely unaware of the brewing name change.