Day 5 - Friday

An entire week has now passed and I am ready for the weekend. To call this week exhausting is an understatement. Today I learned the value of technical glitches and repeat offenders. Let’s start with the technical glitches.

A student, let’s call him Eager, was sent to “The Office” today for injuring another student on the playground. We’ll call the injured fellow, Bumpy. According to the witnesses, Eager lost his cool and pushed Bumpy into a bar. (Perhaps “pole” would be a better term for those of you wondering what kind of a school I come from.) The injury amounted to a slight bump (hence the name, Bumpy). As I always do, I pulled Eager’s discipline file up on the computer to review before acting. To my surprise, Eager’s file was empty. According to our system the child had never so much as smacked a fly on the playground. “Hmmm,” I thought to myself. “This is not the Eager I know.” As a prudent investigator, I ran this up the chain of command, only to determine that there was indeed an error.

After several e-mails around town, it was determined that the file was lost. Despite all of our best efforts to prevent this kind of a disaster, we have no digital evidence that Eager has ever been to the office. Fortunately, a hard copy remains. As for me, Monday promises to be a day full of data entry…unless I can pass it off to someone else. Not likely. Kindergarten registration starts bright and early Monday morning and all the office staff will be busy signing up the little guys.

Now on to repeat offenders. I was informed this morning that the boys bathroom smelled like matches. I walked by the open door and confirmed the report. A closer look revealed that the evidence had been removed and that only the smell remained. Given the lack of witnesses or evidence, there was little I could do to catch the perpetrator. I put the word out to listen for kids talking, but the dismissal bell rang without any response. It looked like this was going to be an unsolved mystery.

But wait, there is an after school program. And it was here that the offender struck twice. Without regard for his own personal safety or the safety of others, Smokey struck his matches in the presence of an adult and the case was solved. I have yet to speak with the child as he was sent home by the after school staff, but come Monday, as soon as I finish my stack of data entry, I’ll be on him like smoke on a fire.