sick days.

Is it just me, or have there been a whole lot of staff absences lately? I mean, I was listening to the on-call assignment list over the p.a. the other day, and it never seemed to end. I began to think that they were just listing the faculty for fun, but that was not the case. SOMEONE IS MURDERING OUR TEACHERS. Okay, that’s not true at all, but I do find it disturbing when the kids in the pit are complaining about their teachers “not showing a consistent attendance record”. Despite this, it is still clear that the absence bug has been plaguing our faculty in recent times.

There are some obvious exceptions to this, of course. Mr. Knox escaped from Woodlands a week or two ago(but knowing our publishing track record, it’s probably been a month or two by now), and his cell has been filled by a Mr. Bill Rowlands. It seems that William “The School of Hard” Knox had served his time, and was now ready to join the outside world. I hope to be paroled myself in a year or so.

Now, the injury roster. First, and most obvious, our fearless leader Mr. Pirk has been sidelined with surgery. He’s going to live, so it’s okay to make fun of the situation. Speculation has been rampant regarding the nature of the surgery, but my inside source indicated that Mr. Pirk already has a working heart, a soul, and that it isn’t actually possible to put your foot in your mouth, let alone surgically remove it. Finally, I’d like to commend Mr. Pirk for somehow getting to the front office every day at 8:25 in spite of his condition in order to introduce the national anthem. There’s only one word for that: Commitment. Anyways, to fill the vacuum of power, Mrs. Lamson was promoted to acting principal, and Mr. Baker, head of math, was bumped up to vice-principal. As an interesting side note, Woody the Ram, the official school mascot, took over the OAC Calculus class, and although in-class grazing time was way up, test scores plummeted.

I see I’ve strayed way off my original point, but here it is: Woodlands has been poisoning students for years, and now the faculty has lost their immunity to the toxic air. Toxic may be an extreme word, but there are some major structural problems with our school. One of these problems, which everyone is dreadfully aware of, is the lack of windows. If I wanted to get my education in a basement apartment, I’d send away for ICS High School. Otherwise, I’d like to see some natural light. Have you ever walked outside on a sunny day? I can actually feel my retinas burning sometimes! What was the logic behind the design of this school? “Hey, I’ve got an idea, let’s deprive our children of sunlight so when a nuclear holocaust occurs, they’ll be prepared for a subterranean existence!” A lot of people say that nothing can be done about this. I say fooey. You wanna promote practical education? Here’s what you do. New course. OAC “This Old House”, taught by Bob Vila. Prerequisite: a violent disposition. Course Fees: whatever the going rate for a sledgehammer is. Field Trips to Home Depot whenever necessary. Get the drift? Knock down some walls, put in some windows. Three out of seven business teachers have been away on stress leave, and it ain’t because of the coffee.

Finally, I’d like to complain about something that cannot possibly be changed, but is outrageous nonetheless. Have you ever wondered why some rooms upstairs are freezing cold, while the room next door feels like the Sumatra jungle? It’s actually very simple. The top floor of our school used to be open-concept. This means that there are no real walls, merely dividers between classrooms. No doors, just open skies. In order to go to the bathroom, one might have had to walk through an ongoing classroom. As one class wrote a crucial unit test, the students in the area next to them could be practicing monkey calls, all within earshot. I used to go to an open concept school, and look at me now. As brilliant as the whole idea is, they decided to can the operation at Woodlands, and subsequently, something went awry. When they built the walls upstairs, they neglected to look at the blueprints of the school, so the air conditioning systems were way out of whack. In some classrooms, air blew in. In others, it was sucked out. (Ever fall asleep in class? It may not have been your fault!) In others still, no air moved at all. Does anybody else see a problem here? The ventilation wasn’t getting all the way through, therefore, we are stuck with a non-conditioning air conditioning system. There’s nothing we can do about this, besides track down the building company who did this and murder them, but it does explain why many have fallen ill in the house of Woodlands.