The Academy (3 page)

Still, some of the teachers were in favor of trying to disassociate themselves from the board, and the idea of a more democratically run school, one in which they would have a say in regard to policy, was definitely appealing to them.

Linda was not so sure.

*

The chamber was packed, all the seats taken, teachers and parents lined up against the walls, more men and women spilling out into the hall. Such a turnout was rare enough during the school year; it was absolutely unheard of in the middle of summer. But both the
Orange County Register
and the local
Santa Mara Sentinel
had printed articles about the proposed charter school, and advocates for both sides had been fanning the flames in an effort to bring out their supporters. Although, in truth, there didn’t seem to be much organized opposition to the idea of a charter school save for some grumbling by the certified and classified employees’ unions—and in conservative Orange County, union support was the kiss of death.

It was why Linda was worried.

Neither Frank nor Diane’s husband, Greg, had wanted to come to the meeting, so she and Diane had carpooled, and though they’d arrived a half hour before the scheduled seven o’clock start time, the small parking lot was already full and they were forced to park on a side street nearly a block away. By the time they made it back to the district offices and up to the third floor, where the meeting was to be held, it was nearly seven and they were lucky to find two spots against the back wall near the doorway where they could stand. Looking around, Linda saw most of Tyler’s teachers and recognized quite a few parents. She tried to eavesdrop on some of the surrounding conversations to get a feeling for the prevailing sentiment, but it was simply too noisy.

“Hey,” Diane said. She pointed. “It’s Jody and Bobbi.”

The principal and her secretary sat silently in the front row, facing straight ahead, not acknowledging anyone or anything around them.

“Weird,” Linda said. “Looks like they turned Stepford on us.”

“Cover me. I’m going in.” Diane turned sideways, sliding between the parents in front of her. “Excuse me. . . . Pardon me. . . . Sorry. . . . Excuse me. . . .” She made her way through the crowd to the front of the room, where she crouched down next to Jody’s seat. She said something, but Linda could not hear what it was from back here, and from this angle it did not appear to her that the principal bothered to look at Diane or even respond. Seconds later, a look of stunned confusion on her face, Diane made her way back through the crowd.

“Well?” Linda prompted.

“She told me to mind my own business if I knew what was good for me.”

“Jody?”

Diane nodded. The confusion on her face had been joined by anger. Other teachers nearby were moving in closer to hear what had happened.

“What did she say
exactly
?” Linda asked.

“Exactly that. ‘Mind your own business if you know what’s good for you.’ In this low creepy voice. She didn’t even look at me, just kept staring straight ahead. Bobbi, too.”

“That’s not like Jody,” declared David Dolliver, the driver’s-ed instructor.

“No kidding. That’s why it freaked me out. It almost sounded like a . . . threat.”

Yvonne Gauthier cleared her throat. “I believe it.” Yvonne was Tyler’s newest teacher, hired last year when one of the former math instructors decided not to return after her maternity leave ended.

All eyes turned toward her.

Yvonne fumbled nervously with her purse. “Don’t get me wrong. Jody’s been great to me, and I think she’s a terrific principal. But when I was hired, she asked me if I had any kids or was planning to have any kids. I told her I was single, though it was really none of her business, and then I said that, yeah, I might want kids one day. She totally changed. Her face got completely serious, and her voice was low and . . . threatening, like you said. It
was
creepy. She told me that she’d been burned by my predecessor, who had lied and said that she never wanted to have kids, and that if I wanted this job, I had to promise never to become pregnant. So I promised. I lied, but I promised.”

Ken Myers shook his head. “I’ve known Jody Hawkes ever since she was a VP at Santa Mara High,” the history teacher said. “She’s one of the kindest, nicest, fairest, most decent people I know. I can’t see her ever behaving in such an unprofessional manner, let alone making threats like that.”

“I
have
seen it,” Yvonne insisted.

“Now I guess I have, too,” Diane said.

There was a sudden stirring of the crowd, an increase in chatter followed by respectful silence as the last of the board members took his seat at the front of the chamber. The teachers’ conversation was dropped as the meeting was called to order. Old business was quickly dispensed with and a few generic procedural items received cursory discussion and votes before the board took up Tyler’s charter proposal.

The debate was surprisingly short given the number of attendees, but most of the people, Linda included, had come to listen rather than speak. Linda wished she had more knowledge of the topic, regretted that she hadn’t done enough research to intelligently discuss the matter, but as she listened to Jody give her presentation and answer softball questions from the board, as she saw the sympathetic hearing given a group of parents who spoke in favor of the proposal and the hostile reception given the heads of the certified and classified employees’ unions who spoke against it, Linda realized that the outcome of the Tyler petition was a foregone conclusion.

She should have been able to predict that, but she’d been looking at everything from the wrong angle. She’d been thinking the board might object to losing control over one of its schools, but she’d forgotten that the ultimate goal for its more ideological memberswas to keep the district’s schools from adhering to state educational standards that were not “Christian” enough. And if weakening state influence entailed letting go of some of its own power, then so be it. Maybe Jody had even made some sort of promise or under-the-table deal with the board in order to get what she wanted.

With one dissension, the proposal was approved, although this did not mean that conversion to a charter school was automatic. The next and final step was to conduct a vote of all of Tyler’s employees to determine whether a majority wished to be independent, or remain as is, under the district’s aegis. If the change was ratified by the employees, those who did not want to work at a charter school could transfer to another campus within the district if there was an opening or if they could bump someone with less seniority. If it was not ratified, the charter proposal was dead in the water for the time being, and either the entire process would have to be started all over again or the idea abandoned.

After the meeting was adjourned, a mob of parents, students and local reporters crowded around Jody to congratulate her and ask questions about the plans for Tyler’s future.

“Come on,” Diane said. “Let’s get out of here.”

On the way home, they passed by the high school. The buildings were dark, black, and the rounded trees in front of the office blended with the contours of the structure to create a silhouetted shape in the gloom that reminded Linda of a hulking monster preparing to pounce. That was a weird thought, and not one that she’d ever had about Tyler before, though she’d been here at night countless times.

Linda glanced away, feeling cold, and it was not until they were several blocks away that she realized what had been wrong with the scene: not only were all the lights in the school off, but the streetlights on that side of Grayson were out as well, as though a blackout had hit only that one block. It made the school seem not only the focus of the darkness but the cause of it. She didn’t like that, and though she knew life wasn’t literature, the metaphor troubled her.

It was as if Diane could read her mind. “Things are changing,” her friend said, and Linda was not sure if that was sadness or worry she heard in Diane’s voice. It certainly wasn’t anticipation.

“So what’s your take on this whole charter school thing?” Linda asked. They’d been talking about Jody’s behavior ever since the meeting adjourned, but they hadn’t discussed the charter proposal.

“It really doesn’t matter. It’s going through despite what I think.”

“But what
do
you think?”

Diane sighed. “I’ll deny I ever said this. And it wouldn’t have occurred to me even two hours ago. But the thought of giving Jody complete autonomy over the school scares the crap out of me. After what I saw in there . . .”

“At least school boards can be recalled,” Linda agreed. “At least they’re elected.”

“So you don’t buy our big switch to democracy either, huh?”

“Do I think we’re all going to have equal say in how the school is run? Do I think it’s all going to be one communal lovefest where all of our wishes are going to be granted? No.”

“It’s all there in the charter, in black-and-white. You heard Jody.”

“Yes,” Linda said, “I did.”

Frank was in bed when she got home, watching a rerun of
Monk
. At least some things never changed, and she felt safe and comfortable as she brushed her teeth, took off her clothes and crawled in bed next to him. They made love, and though he was only halfway engaged and kept his eye on the television the entire time in order to see the end of his show, that was all right.

In fact, it was nice.

Two

Two days later, Linda received in the mail a heavy package consisting of two hundred bound photocopied pages with a title sheet that read “John Tyler High School Charter.” There was also a cover letter and a numbered ballot on which were listed two choices: “Accept Charter” and “Reject Charter.” The ballots were to be turned in at a mandatory meeting of all faculty and staff that was scheduled for Monday morning at ten.

Neither Diane nor any of the other teachers with whom she’d talked after the board meeting had believed that converting Tyler High to a charter school could be accomplished in less than a year. There were simply too many details to attend to, too many t’s to be crossed and i’s to be dotted. And although there’d been no mention of a timetable, they had all assumed that if the proposal was approved, the
following
school year would be the first under the new charter. However, as the cover letter made clear, the principal and the charter committee had every intention of implementing the changes
this
year and immediately shifting all administrative responsibilities from the district to the school.

Linda had never heard any mention of a charter committee before this, and she read the names of the seven members with interest. They were all teachers and staff members who she’d heard through the grape-vine were gung ho about switching over. The principal’s secretary, Bobbi, of course, and Janet Fratelli, the fascist librarian, as well as the math teacher Art Connor and the band teacher, Joseph Carr, two recent hires she recognized by sight but didn’t really know. Then there was history teacher Nina Habeck, PE coach John Nicholson and art teacher Scott Swaim, all instructors with whom Linda had had run-ins over the past few years, Nina because of her insensitive treatment of a learning-disabled freshman girl who’d ended up in tears after a humiliating lecture in front of the rest of her class. This did not bode well, and Linda called Diane to get her take on the situation.

“Jody may have kept mum about this charter thing to us, but she obviously has a whole transition team in place and a plan that’s rarin’ to go,” her friend said. “My opinion of that woman has done a complete one eighty over the past week. I swear, if you had told me last semester that I would feel anything but gratitude and admiration for her, after the way she turned this school around, I’d’ve said you were crazy. I considered her a friend!”

“I know,” Linda agreed. “As far as I was concerned, Jody was the best principal I’ve ever worked under. And who knows? Maybe she still is. But it’s definitely disturbing to find out that she was covertly planning a coup the whole time she was pretending that it was business as usual.”

“You know,” Diane pointed out, “we were two of the biggest complainers about the school board, especially after the election.”

“Which is why it’s so weird that Jody didn’t confide in us. I mean, this wasn’t some big state secret. There was no
reason
to keep this under wraps. And it seems to me that by getting the input of the teachers, she could have made an even more effective case for secession. But the way she went about it . . .”

“Does not seem promising,” Diane agreed.

“Exactly.”

“Maybe we’re wrong,” her friend offered. “We will be getting away from the district’s craziness, so it could be that this really will be better for the school. Maybe it’s
not
a power grab and Jody’s just passionate because she believes so much in this.”