The M.I.L.F. Man

Paradise lost

There were reporters outside the Walther gates again when the vans pulled through—only a few local vans this time, that didn't chase us as we drove in. Got a few shots of Chas getting out of the car, but it wasn't about us this time.

And when we got to the office, the the clerks were huddled around a desk 'way back from the counter and Tom's office was full of male suits and a woman right in the doorway, wearing one of those dresses you only see on CSPAN when Congress is in session. Pearls. Prim and proper.

Ramona sidled up to this big old district security guy and said, "What the hell?"

"Damned near the whole junior class got busted," the security guy said. Jesus Zepeda, according to the card on his campus lavalier—looked like a sumo wrestler, that guy. I'd seen him lumbering around Valencia, too, a few times. They'd called in the big guns...

"Busted for what?" I asked.

"Drugs."

Chas' brows went up. "Really?"

"Had a lotta kids in the nurse's office feelin' kinda sick after lunch. Nurse got suspicious'n' they called in a few kids, searched some backpacks—lotta prescription pills. Few suspicious ones we couldn't identify right off. And then right after school let out, this kid slammed his car into a big old truck down the street—ran a stop sign. Supposed to be some o' the smartest kids in the whole school, those ones. It's a mess."

"Tryin'a say they were headed over there to join up with the seniors," this one clerk, Justine, warned me. "Or that some of the seniors gave 'em that shit."

I nodded as the story started to take shape in my head. "The Valencia kids weren't anywhere near here."

Justine shrugged. "They heard some of the kids left in cars. So they figure they were planning to meet up somewhere..."

Chas caught hold of my hand like he could feel my temperature rising.

And Ramona said, "Well, there goes Tom's 'Perfect Principal' tour..."

Because the BBC piece had gotten Tom a Ted Talk and bookings for all kinds of seminars and workshops. And the district—the whole state, actually--was ecstatic.

Arizona has the worst schools in the country; it's official, I'm not being snarky. Scary low achievement test scores, ridiculously high dropout and attendance rates. We're the worst in every category they measure. Below states that were traditionally rock bottom for decades.

But you get what you pay for. Voters nix bond issues, politicians swear that schools waste what little money they already have. And the "culture wars" made it worse.

On the news I saw this wild-eyed white woman in a Trump hat yelling, "In what world do you get a raise for bein' the worst teachers in the goddamned country?" But then a lot of brown folks were saying the same thing.

And having been taught by more than a few pretty shitty teachers I was conflicted. It was the "which came first, the chicken or the egg" thing, sort of. Were they bad teachers to begin with or had they been neglected so bad they couldn't take anymore?

Whatever the cause, I'd decided to become a teacher after sitting in too many classes where the teacher just handed out books and worksheets and let us pretty much fend for ourselves. A couple of them even handed out the grading keys and let us check our own work at the end of the period. All they had to do was enter the grades on the computer. Swear to God, it was that bad.