B 26

Excerpt from Among School Children

... Al formed a T with lifted hands, emitted a quick referee's whistle, and said, "Time out." He often said, "Which is fine," about something that wasn't. About the new institution of the two -day a week late bus," he told his teachers, "This is a home run for us, it really is."

"Page ten," Al read at that first faculty meeting. "When you're ready and you have your weekly schedule, you're to block this off. When do I have math, when do I have reading, when do I have health, when do I have art."

Out in the audience, a teacher near Chris muttered, "When do I have coffee'," Chris smiled.

Al often ended meetings by saying -the logic isn't always clear ... but we're doin' a good job."

When Al said that, Chris worried that he might at last be on the verge of denying the real problems all around them in the school. Almost no one involved in education says the outrageously wrong thing. Plenty do it. But Chris thought Al was almost an opposite case. On really important matters, he usually did what was best for the students. Somehow he always seemed to find the money for new books or materials or field trips. She thought her school’s classes remained small partly because of Al's clever budgeting. She gathered that Al sometimes fell out of favor on Suffolk Street, school administration headquarters, but she thought it significant that during the first crucial year of desegregation, Suffolk Street had sent Al to her school to soothe the white parents who had demanded proof that their children would be safe down in the Flats. Al, with a great deal of help from the chief secretary, Lil, kept the school running smoothly. The office of the Director of Bilingual Education for the city was situated in Al's school. At least once a year Al would pick a fight with that department over some small administrative matter. The director insisted, though, that he could easily forgive Al because of the way Al ran the school.