Need A new Chattooga Principle Now

The editor of the Dalton paper wrote this about the principal's vandalism of the yaerbooks:

school and to this day several of my closest friends are my former classmates.

That’s why the story I read this week had me shaking my head.

It seems the new principal, an ex-military, by-the-book type engineered one of the lamer stunts I’ve seen in recent years.

The principal, with the support of his superintendent, personally lopped four pages out of the schools yearbook because of pictures he found offensive.

So what were the students doing in those controversial photos? Drinking brown liquor? Bagging dope? Robbing a Kangaroo?

Hardly.

Mostly they were just acting like doofus teenage boys — playing basketball, mugging for the camera.

Maybe it was the fact that many of the boys were shirtless in the pictures that drove the powers-that-be into a scissors-slashing frenzy, but I’ve got news for them. That’s what boys do when they play ball.

Were they really good pictures?

Not really.

Were they artsy and classy?

Not so much.

Were they enough to justify an overly sensitive bureaucrat taking a blade to a $50 yearbook that was already paid for?

Evidently.

cont.

The publication’s contents had been OK’d by the yearbook adviser, since retired, who had been overseeing the yearbook for the better part of three decades.

He was OK with the photos and is angry that the book he and his students worked long and hard on was defaced by the current group of educational apparatchiks running the gulag school system.

(Note: For the record, the yearbook adviser is a former teacher and an old friend of mine. I have not talked to him about this story.)

This story reminds me of a few of my own scrapes in the halls of ol’ CHS.

We had a librarian who would take a pair of scissors to the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. She chopped out the offending bodies of all the young ladies who dared to bare on the creamy white pages of America’s most popular sports weekly.

The weird thing is she wouldn’t just remove the entire pages or just pull the issue entirely, she would painstakingly cut out the offending photos, leaving us to grandly imagine what tawdry images they must have been.

This is the same librarian who later accused me of running a bookie service out of the library. I got sent to the office on that one, but assistant principal Fred Toney — yes, that Fred Toney, the former Southeast basketball coach and Phoenix High principal — laughed off the accusation.

Coach Toney wasn’t so jovial my senior year when I violated a rule that apparently the bosses took a lot more seriously than I realized.

Only a few weeks from graduation — after an embarrassingly incident-free four years of education — I was caught by “Coach” in the hallways ... AFTER THE BELL!!!

Apparently this was considered an act of anarchy by the higher-ups. Later, in the office, I was told to assume the position.

Now don’t get me wrong. I really liked and respected Fred Toney but something about that situation didn’t sit right.

OK, I was in the hall AFTER THE BELL!!!!! by about five minutes and for this — at age 17 — I was supposed to let a grown man whack me in the posterior with a wooden board.

Nope.

Not gonna happen.

After I declined to bend and grin, I was told that I would submit to the punishment or I would be going home on suspension.

“OK, I’ll go home.”

Coach Toney was not happy and loudly made it clear to me how unhappy he was. I still declined to be paddled.

That’s when the coach did a very smart thing. He sat me down and gave me a speech — emphasizing how personally disappointed he was in my behavior. It was brutal.

That speech was a heck of a lot worse punishment than a paddling would have been, and I left the office a chastened young man.(I also had to pick up trash after school for the next three days.)

It’s amazing the results that reason and respect — two-way respect — can have on a young person.

Better even than a pair of scissors.

thegallofthisman wrote:

Why does he think his opinion is the only one that counts.I believe Mr Perry was a teacher/educator for longer than this lenderman dude has been in Education. He should be well versed in freedom of speech and the right to use print/photos. I think we have the wrong man again for this school. Don't try to turn it into Trion. If that is what you want- GO THERE. If I had paid for that annual I would want my money back. Cutting pages out of an annual? How many people did he pay to do that? GONE!!!

Call me crazy. When you can spell Principal (not principle), then you can start deciding when we need a new one. Another shit for brains product of the Chattooga County School system.

Besides a new principal, we may also need to get another football coaching staff. One and done, AGAIN! Total waste of that big signing bonus for the head coach. While we're at it, why not replace everyone now on the Board of Education. And the Superintendant of Schools. And....

Mike wrote:

He does seem to have some Ed Rooney in him.

Maybe some Dick Vernon, too.

Thank God for a prinicpal like Mr. Lenderman. We have been lacking leadership at Chattooga High School for at least 20 years.They need some discipline at that school. Leadership comes at a cost and putting those pictures in that yearbook was a mistake and it took a Man to correct it!!!! Mr. Lenderman is just doing what parents should be doing!!!!!

Vandalizing other people's property?

FormerCHSStudent wrote:

<quoted text>
Maybe some Dick Vernon, too.

ya got me there. who is dick vernon and what did he do?

Leroy Leowenstein wrote:

big signing bonus for the head coach

signing bonus? for a highschool football coach? at chattooga? how much?

Remember the "old days"? When teachers, principals, policemen and other authority figures were respected? I have seen parents who always fight the system over every little thing, and now their kids are either serving time or on probation because they were taught that nothing is their fault and to disrespect authority figures. Can't we just stand behind our authority figures in such trivial situations and set a good example for our youth? What's the point in a principal if no one will let him do his job. In addition, have none of you noticed how many you have already ran off? If you want a better reputation for your school, stop acting like a bunch of ruffians.

As the editor of the Dalton paper noted, respect is a two-way street. If the principal wants to get it, he should first start showing some.

weirdcounty wrote:

Remember the "old days"? When teachers, principals, policemen and other authority figures were respected? I have seen parents who always fight the system over every little thing, and now their kids are either serving time or on probation because they were taught that nothing is their fault and to disrespect authority figures. Can't we just stand behind our authority figures in such trivial situations and set a good example for our youth? What's the point in a principal if no one will let him do his job. In addition, have none of you noticed how many you have already ran off? If you want a better reputation for your school, stop acting like a bunch of ruffians.

Perfect. The man with the advanced degree is not going to earn a bunch of spoiled inbreds' respect. Just because mom and dad spend their waking hours trying to please little bubba doesn't mean the school system should do the same. They need to learn, respect is NOT a two way street. Can't wait til they join the military and demand respect from their drill instructor. Should be mandatory.

Mutilating someone else's property sets a great example. So does acting like a prissy old lady.

FormerCHSStudent wrote:

Vandalizing other people's property?

It's not their property until it is released to the students. Just like the Summerville News paper isn't the property of a yearly subscriber until they release it. If the Summerville News printed something that they deemed offensive but didn't catch the mistake until after all papers were printed and ready for delivery, would you consider it vandalism for them to remove the page before they were delivered even if their method was to just rip the page out or cut the offensive picture/word/etc… out of the middle of the page?

The fact is – Jim was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. Either way, someone would bi+ch about it. If he hadn’t taken the pages out, every church in the county would have raised hell (no pun indented) that these offensive photos were published – along with many parents.

So the bottom line is, If you don’t like the fact the pages were taken out then get your money back.

just a bunch of stupid kids showing their middle finger and grabing their crotch no big deal just not what needs to be in the annual. good job jimmy keep it up if the parents don't like take the kids somewhere else

jackson wrote:

<quoted text>ya got me there. who is dick vernon and what did he do?

He's the principal in "The Breakfast Club."

For those with a military background, cutting up a yearbook is more like something Herbert Sobel would have done or Richard Winters?

Grabbing crotches and shooting birds. I can't think of a better way to memorialize the education at CHS. Imagine if they put photos of kids reading books! Then we'd know it was staged.

Clearly some people haven't even seen the photos they are upset about.

FormeCHSSTudent wrote:

Clearly some people haven't even seen the photos they are upset about.

Is there a photo of a guy shooting a bird?

I saw the one where the guy was holding the other kids head at his crotch.

Those two pics alone are enough for me to understand why the pages were removed.

That's the level of education kids receive in Chattooga. Head in crotch. Sounds like they're grooming to be lawyers or meth heads.