That’s what should have happened at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island.
Last month, honchos in the state’s Central Falls School District voted to fire the principal, three assistant principals and 77 teachers.
According to news reports, only 7 percent of CFHS students are proficient in math; half failed every subject, and an additional 45 percent aren’t skilled in reading.
Those are grim stats indeed, but I wonder if school board members and Central Falls School District Superintendent Frances Gallo have considered this: Wouldn’t it have been easy for the teachers, in the interest of keeping their jobs, to pass all those failing students?
But let’s assume for the moment that board members — they voted 5-2 to dismiss the CFHS personnel — and Gallo are perfectly justified in the firings.
The fact is they still missed the mark. It would have been just as appropriate for every board member — and Gallo herself — to hand in their resignations right after the firings.
The blame should fall on their shoulders just as much as it does on the staff at CFHS.
What Gallo and the board members did was apply what’s called the “bad stuff settling at the bottom” principle. All you vets out there know what that is, if your military basic training sergeant was like the one I had.
His name was Wallace Tidwell; he was a staff sergeant in the U.S. Air Force when I enlisted in 1974. He stood about 5 feet 8 inches tall and must have weighed a rotund, endomorphic 240 pounds.
Not all of that was fat; much of it was muscle. Staff Sgt. Tidwell told us at the beginning of basic training that we were free to talk to him “man to man” anytime.
That meant we could say anything to him, call him names and even punch his lights out if we felt like it.
I looked at that stocky build and said, to myself only, “I know he doesn’t think I’m crazy enough to take him up on that offer.”
Staff Sgt. Tidwell’s favorite expression was “the bad stuff settles at the bottom.” He didn’t say “bad stuff,” of course. He used a term that was a bit more … oh, what’s the proper word here?
Scatological.
That was Staff Sgt. Tidwell’s way of reminding us that when things fouled up, we, as airmen basics, would bear the brunt of any punishment or fallout.
That was when I was an airman basic; but I’m a journalist now. And as a journalist, I’ve kind of revised Staff Sgt. Tidwell’s rule.
For a journalist, in matters that involve public policy and, most importantly, taxpayers’ dollars, the “bad stuff” doesn’t settle at the bottom.
It kind of rises to the top. The buck stops with the head honchos and the bosses, not with the little guys.
That’s why I believe the first heads that should have rolled in the Central Falls School District in Rhode Island should have been those of the school board members and the superintendent.
If they didn’t have the stomach for resigning, or the common decency to fire themselves first, then they should have used what I, without a trace of humility, call the Kane Principle.
Don’t terminate. Remunerate. That means don’t fire anybody. If students aren’t being educated at CFHS, then simply cut the parents of those students a check for whatever is the per-pupil expenditure in the state of Rhode Island.
With that money, parents would be free to either homeschool their children or send them to a school of their choice.
Say it with me, Ms. Gallo: Don’t terminate; remunerate.
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
