Lean on me one more time ...
I finished my short stint working with students from the District of Columbia public school system last week. I learned a great deal about the school system since I worked with students from ten different high schools instead just one. The most interesting stuff however was certainly the individual stories about each school.
One of the simpler stories was that at Anacostia Senior High school, a school in very poor part of the city, the last principle was fired for locking some of the doors, which is a fire code violation, shut because they didn’t enough security guards to monitor each door. A city wide student government member told me they are looking into getting doors that can lock and unlock automatically, instead manually.
If this sounds familiar, it might be because this is same scenario that was the climax of “Lean on Me”, the 1989 movie based on real events staring Morgan Freeman. The reason for chaining the doors in the movie was to keep out drug dealers. I know another big factor at Anacostia was keeping students from leaving early. In the movie Freeman’s character says if he had been in a richer white school he wouldn't have this problem because they all have doors that can be unlocked automatically, in the event of a fire.
I wouldn’t want you to think all the stories I heard were negative, in fact public policy concerning public schools is too strongly affected by overly negative media portrayals. However in this case it seems a sad statement for the world to hear of an old problem recurring more then fifteen years later.
8:43:42 PM 
|
