teacher loved her, was dating her, and was going to run off and marry her.
Mr. Blue said the student was in his class, but he never spoke with her
except in his role as a teacher.
The principal asked Mr. Blue if he trusted him to handle the matter cor-
rectly, and he said yes (the trust build up by the new teacher workshops
cannot be underestimated). In front of the teacher, Mr. Chen called the
investigations office and told them he wanted to report an allegation of
sexual misconduct. As Mr. Blue squirmed in his seat, Mr. Chen gave the
pertinent information requested: name of student, name of teacher, details
of the allegation.
Then the investigator asked who had made the allegation. Mr. Chen
replied, the teacher. There was a long moment of silence on the line and
then the question, “What do you mean the teacher? He reported himself?”
Mr. Chen said yes and told the investigator the story that the teacher had
told him. Mr. Chen was told to investigate the matter himself. By now
this had become the accepted procedure for matters that the overworked
investigations office did not deem serious.
This investigation took no time at all. The student’s guidance counselor
knew her as a troubled child with an active and vivid imagination that
usually involved being taken out of her very bad family situation by some
savior, in this case her teacher. The counselor arranged for special help
for the child, Mr. Chen reported back to the investigations office, and the
matter was closed. Mr. Chen and Mr. Blue knew the student’s story was
a fabrication. School leaders need to remember that students of all ages
sometimes have active imaginations and sometimes lie.
There are times when you can stay in the box and still do what is im-
portant and right for students. An example is the way in which Principal
Thelen interpreted the mathematics requirement for a diploma. In the late
1990s, the state regulation was clear: Students had to take three years of
mathematics and pass one examination, the Math A Regents. The curricu-
lum for Math A and Math B was a twenty-year experiment in integrated
mathematics—combining topics from algebra, geometry, statistics, and
trigonometry—that looked good on paper but did not work in actuality.
It has since been replaced by the more traditional curriculum used by the
rest of the country. Each course required a three-semester sequence of
study.
176 Chapter 13