School Bureaucracy

The High School starring the cast of H. R. Puffinstuff

Every year in Mega District, thirty thousand teachers were laid off in June and then brought back in September in order to save money on the month of August. The frugal punishment went on for three years. I was lucky to have a position as a traveling teacher with the Arts Branch. Traveling experts flew under the radar and survived cuts. In order to teach theater in California, one had to have an English credential. The ability to teach theater and direct plays was, unbelievably, not relevant. This mandate put me behind English teachers, all of whom had seniority with twenty years under their belts. Yet, I was to be saved.

In hindsight, I should have seen the signs of a major fiasco in the interview. I was chosen to be a High School drama teacher.My joy was overshadowed by my father’s imminent death due to pancreatic cancer. My dad was a retired art teacher, he had a wealth of knowledge, and he was very funny. We spent every morning together on the phone during my commute to the job, telling each other stories.His absence was tremendous, I lost my best friend. Pancreatic cancer is silent until it’s too late for any medical intervention. He was diagnosed in November and gone by August.At the end of his life, he was so thin and pale. We sat with him all night until he was finally free from the pain. When I arrived for the faculty interview, in July, I was in a fog. I sat down and compartmentalized my brain from all thought besides getting past this interview.

The meeting took place in the cramped principal’s office which was busting at the gills with ten individuals, sat smushed next to one another. Each held a paper containing a single question for me to elaborate upon. If the principal was a bit odd, the rest of the group was nuts.I felt as if I was thrust into an episode of the short-lived H.R. Puffinstuff kids show by the Kroft Brothers that I watched every Saturday in the 1970’s as a little kid. The show took place in Living Island and starred a real Broadway child actor fresh from playing the lead in Oliver! who had a magic flute. The boy ended up in the enchanted world of H.R. Puffinstuff, a character with a giant head and a kind spirit who became the inspiration for the McDonalds character, Mayor McCheese. The ensemble cast included the villain, Wilhemina W. Witchiepoo whose henchmen were Orson Vulture and Seymour Spider, Dr. Blinkey an owl, Freddy the magic Flute, Cling and Clang, Ludicrous Lion, and Judy the frog. Before my eyes the interview committee morphed perfectly into the cast of this obscure show. The principal giggled a touch more than required, played the bag pipes and had a bushy silver mustache which reminded me of H.R. Puffinstuff himself. The Assistant Principal, who would later be revealed as the witch, introduced herself as “Roy”. Her bumbling henchmen were the basketball coach and the Dean.

I was baffled by the name too. Roy was probably close to 300 pounds and was costumed more like a gardener then an administrator. I envisioned her reeling from the disheartening development of a gigantic behind, ass, rump, keister which must have weighed at least 100 pounds on its own. During my three years tenure, her derriere embarrassingly became wedged in every armed chair she tried to occupy. She was given the smallest office that had its own bathroom for obvious reasons.One of the most memorable situations was when Roy broke her privet toilet, flooding the main hall with contaminated water. Her toilet remained closed for the rest of the year. Roy was despised by the staff who unanimously cheered with joy when she was traded in for a better leader. I eventually labeled her the ‘Minotaur’.

Despite the classical Greek monster label, Puffinstuff and Roy were pleasant next to the English department. The chair of the English department, Dr. Blinkey, was an ancient codger who was recovering from a recent stroke which caused his diction to be incoherent. His protégé, the English department chair was Handmyer or as I called him, Ludacris Lion, a man who had vowed to get rid of the principal whom we will refer to as Principal Puffinstuff. Poor Puffinstuff insisted on everyone saying the pledge of allegiance before faculty meetings, which Handmyer equated with fascism. It was obvious that the rest of the English department was in awe of the bravery of Handmyer. When he snidely commented on the questions put forth by Puffinstuff and Roy, the other faculty all copied him. When he made rude gestures, the others tried to come up with their own, obsequious gestures, which would not offend the school’s administrative tyranny but would show support for their idol.

I learned that Handmyer was a rock star on the weekends, which explained the dark shades, leather jacket and his hatred of the system. He had bigger dreams but like most of us, taught for the steady paycheck and health insurance.

I was tenured however, Mega District, in its quest to efficiently complete paperwork, had a six-month backlog. The paper pushers downtown erroneously sent me a letter stating that I was displaced for not having a CLAD, cultural learning certification, since CLAD was not specifically mentioned in my college program. A BFA in theater, a Masters in English and Special Education, and a second Masters of Administration were not enough. Teachers must continuously take course work which ends up being the same information they studied in college with a new pamphlet and poster! Huzzah Education! To top off that joyful news, the letter arrived 16 days before my father passed.

As with all problems in mega district, it boiled down to paperwork incompetence. Since I was educated in Massachusetts, I would now be required to have a SADAIE (CLAD) certificate. Cultural learning and diversity fall under special education and working with English learners.As a drama teacher, all I focused on was cultural learning via musicals such as Fiddler on the Roof, Romeo and Juliet, Once on this Island, Shrek the Musical and many more. The gist was that teachers needed to act out material for students who were learning English and use real objects, like an actual brick instead of a picture of a brick. Sounds like a Drama teacher, right? But who cared. I, with 20 thousand others HAD to have one. I dutifully went to UCLA. I earned the cultural learning certificate, which also bumped my pay by 15 thousand a year.

Human resources continued to try to displace me after I went and did their required training. When I pointed this out to the third nameless peon, I was reinstated. Imagine if I had just taken the letter and pissed off?Who knows where I would be now, but that’s another story.

I rushed back East to watch my father die, have a huge battle with my stepmother, bury my father, pack, and ship anything that my stepmother would allow me to have and return to California on the red eye for the first day of school. My daughter was going into 9th grade, and she was devastated with the loss of her grandfather. In hindsight I wish I had not been involved in the work of putting on large productions that took all my time. Finally, the best of all occurred, waiting on the door was an eviction notice. What more could a girl ask for?

At least I had the job.

By the second week of school, all the small cracks that I noticed in the interview had blown wide open. I realized that I was amidst an all-out war to rid the school of Puffinstuff and Roy, and I was smack in the crosshairs.

The destruction of utopia began at the Hello! Festival. Puffinstuff was tasked with cleaning up the entire school, the gangs, drugs, poor attendance and low-test scores and he decided to do it by turning the clock back to the1950’s. The Hello! assembly was supposed to build morale amongst the staff and build school spirit in the student body by encouraging everyone to sponsor a group or join a club.

Unfortunately, the plan had the opposite effect. Puffinstuff had created a singing group that he thought would bridge all the cultural differences at the school. Puffinstuf’s big plan was to rope in ten white kids, at a seventy percent Latino school, then have them yelling pop tunes from Britney Spears and Katie Perry as he played away like Salieri from Amadeus. Tempo, notes, harmony, breathe control…..who needs it! The world could be changed by music, no matter how bad and Puffinstuff would prove it if it killed him. Let the show begin.

The announcement ordered the school to the auditorium. More than half of the teachers just kicked their classes out and avoided the assembly all together. Students were running in all of the doors to the building as “Don’t Stop Believing” was blasting.

Puffinstuff was oblivious to the anarchy in the auditorium. On the stage, the group was trying to prepare for their set. The students were scared and wanted to skip the performance. The audience members were screaming and throwing items around, with a few pieces of trash making their way onto the stage. Roy, Minotaur, was marching up and down the aisles with a radio yelling at Puffinstuff on the other end about how disorganized the event was. His response was to go off stage for a moment to emerge festooned with a fully operational set of bagpipes.

He began blowing and working his bag, which, as we all know, sounded like drowned cats. This wailing and honking sounds infuriated the crowd. They were hissing, swearing, throwing more trash and trying to escape to the school yard. It was complete anarchy. I jumped in only to save the theater building itself. Unbelievably, Handmyer and his posse were all in the back row screaming and yelling along with the students. He had even managed to get Cling and Clang, AKA the foreign language teachers, to join in on the open rebellion. I was so horrified at Handmyer and the gang that I scolded them and told them to shut the hell up. The rebel crew skulked away, and I shut the lights off and grabbed a microphone. I insisted that Puffinstuff take a break and peacefully urged the audience to sit in the cool dark room and relax. As they quieted, the singing of the seven white kids began and the crowd erupted.

The rest is a blur of disorganization, yelling, lights going on and off, and students being removed by the school police. Student leaders made speeches about cupcake clubs and chess clubs that went unheard, and the singing group ran out the back crying in humiliation. Total chaos. Then the bell rescued us, ending the Hello! Event. Puffinstuff turned to me with a huge smile on his face declaring that this year was much better than the last. Last year the kids released rats in the administration hall he told me. What gumption these kids had.

This is how it was for the remainder of my days at the school site. If I could title the movie of this job, it would be, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” as I had a boss who was completely oblivious to the outright rejection of his ideas and policies but who carried on as if he was a beloved father to all, who tortured everyone with his bagpipes and the tone-deaf yellers. He had the group perform in the morning, before faculty meetings, at teacher breakfasts, before all sporting events, including water polo, the day before and after holidays and vacations and in

the community. I was secretly convinced that he was making everyone participate only to aggravate the Handmyer clique.

There are pictures of children at the local Elementary school holding their ears and crying as Puffinstuff blew his horrendous bagpipes. There are pictures of the group singing out front of a boarded-up shop at a sketchy strip mall with no audience, an opening of a convenience store, the district central offices, and a local Damn reopening again with no audience just Puffinstuff, his keyboard and the tone-deaf screamers. Most days people did not even know where the principal of the school was, yet nothing deterred Puffinstuff.