Top o' the Ninth

 As my wife and I rode home from our Civil War seminar on Saturday afternoon, we were talking about something from my high school days. I was telling a story about an incident with a math teacher and when I finished, she asked if I had any more stories about school. I thought that after 43 years of marriage, she had heard all of the stories, but I was obviously wrong. Anyway, we both managed to squeeze in a few stories before we arrived at home.

I hated high school. It just didn't work for me. It just wasn't what I would label a good educational experience. In those days in Tampa, high school was grades 10 to 12. There were 714 people in my class on graduation day. There were about 1200 juniors and 1800 sophomores. It was a big school or a small city, you choose.

The ninth grade was my favorite year of school. The junior high school was crowded, but it was still small enough that you knew most of the other people. We were on double sessions in both the eighth and ninth grades. In the ninth grade, school started a few minutes after 7:00 AM and we were dismissed a little after 1:30 PM. 

What was my favorite class in the ninth grade? Civics!! Those of you who are regular readers of this swill should not be surprised by that fact. More than just a classroom learning experience that year, we had actual experience in the field. 

In that year at Pierce Junior High, we had two (2) strikes. The first was a labor strike by the teacher's union. The second was a lunchroom strike by students. We will cover the teacher's strike first since my involvement in that was minimal.

That was the 1967-1968 school year in Florida. One of the strike leaders was Bob Martinez. Bob later became Mayor of Tampa and then the Governor of Florida. He did all of this without a single vote from me. I don't think that public employees should have the right to strike. Public employees have a level of job security that those of us in private business rarely enjoy. Everything is a tradeoff. 

The strike lasted a week, maybe ten days. I just don't remember. My science teacher, Mr. James Clark, did not strike. He was a retired Air Force colonel and I doubt that any of the other teachers even discussed the subject with him. Mr. Clark was blunt almost to the point of being crude. Readers are left to their own judgment as to whether this impacted me. 

The teachers had taken most of their class rosters and other materials with them. I guess that was in case they decided to invite us to their homes for a class. As a result, on the first couple of days, the interim teachers passed around an attendance sheet for us to sign. Anyone who has known a 14-year-old would know that this was not going to go well. Sure enough, as the sheet came to my desk, I noticed that someone had listed their name as "Chuck Wagon". After signing my name, I passed the sheet to the guy next to me. His name was (seriously) John Paul Jones. He signed it and passed it on. The sheet worked its way back to the teacher.

The teacher stood and started calling names. She called three or four and then stopped. She said, "I knew that someone would do this. However, I expected more creativity than John Paul Jones. You can do better than that." My friend John was waving his arms as she called his name. She ignored him. A few names later, she called, "Chuck? Chuck Wagon? Where are you, Chuck?" I told John to raise his hand. He did and she called him Chuck for the rest of the week. Thank God they settled that strike.

The teachers' strike forever changed my perspective on teachers. It is an opinion too long to go into today. Let's just say that it is not favorable to educators.

The food in our school lunchroom was terrible, even compared to other school lunchrooms. One Friday in Mr. Russo's Civics class, we were complaining about lunch on the previous day. The menu purported that the entree was "chicken and yellow rice". No one in the room reported finding even a small chunk of chicken in their meal. I suggested that they had one chicken for the entire school and just dipped it into the several pots that contained the rice as it cooked. From across the hall came a science teacher, James Pullin, who had heard the spirited discussion. Miss Burlington came from her classroom next door to join the discussion. After a few minutes, Mr. Pullin said "If you don't like the food, why keep eating it? Go on strike!" Years later, Mr. Pullin told me that he didn't think that we would actually go on strike.

That afternoon, several of us gathered out on the lawn to talk about the strike. We agreed to start on Monday. Terry Prosser was the de facto leader of the group. We agreed to start telling as many people as possible over the weekend. We even talked about it in Sunday School at my church. 

On Monday, I carried my lunch to school. As I was walking to school, I saw that many of my friends were also carrying their lunch. It was a good sign! When lunchtime came, we tried to count how many people were carrying their lunch. We estimated that 15 to 20% did not buy lunch in the cafeteria. By the end of the day, the strike was the hot topic around the school. Before leaving that afternoon, Terry Prosser had delivered a letter to Principal John Marzolf about the lunchroom strike.

On Tuesday, about 80% of the students did not buy lunch. Prosser had not had any contact with Mr. Marzolf about his letter. 

On Wednesday, less than 10% of the students bought lunch. Mr. Marzolf talked to Prosser and scheduled a Student Council meeting for Thursday afternoon in the library.

My job in the strike group was to research the rules on school lunches. I had gone to the downtown Tampa Library to do this. In those days, the US Department of Agriculture had a program where they distributed surplus commodities to the school lunch program. They gave them flour, cheese and other items. The catch was that they had to follow government guidelines on meals. For example, we were supposed to have fresh bread every day. I was getting more bread at monthly church communion than I was getting at school. There were also local policies on student meals. It was safe to say that our lunchroom was not in line with those policies.

Thursday afternoon at the Student Council meeting, the library was packed. In addition to the usual attendees, there were several teachers and administrators there. In addition, there was a reporter and a cameraman there from WFLA-TV. In the meeting, several students spoke about their issues with the lunchroom. I spoke about the standards that were not being met. Mr. Marzolf told us that they were going to investigate, and we would meet again soon. 

That night, WFLA aired their story about the lunchroom strike. They did a good job of presenting the students' viewpoint.  Apparently, there were many parents who did not know what was happening at the school lunchroom. My mother had a couple of calls from other parents about it. I don't know how many calls school board members received.

I don't know if the school system and their administrators received a lot of calls, but the next morning during homeroom around 7:30 AM, several of us were called to the office to meet with Mr. Marzolf. He explained that the school system was going to make immediate changes in the lunchroom, and we would discuss it more at a Student Council meeting that afternoon.  When the Student Council met a few hours later, the administration discussed the changes they were making and asked that we make a trial run of the new lunch program on Monday. We agreed to try it.

On Monday I was eager to see what they had done at the lunchroom. The lunch menu was open-faced, hot roast beef sandwiches with mashed potatoes and green beans. They maintained a much better meal program for the rest of the year. It may have turned back to crap the next year, but I doubt it. 

That was how you get change. No one rioted, looted, turned over cars, or screamed into passing faces. No one's life was threatened. We stated our grievances, pointed out that the administration was not obeying their own rules as well as other governmental policies. We got some free press coverage of a well-behaved Student Council calmly and orderly presenting their case.  As a result, we achieved our goals. Young people today should take note.

And that is how I became a professional malcontent.