Principal Mark sat in his office with the door closed.
He liked being called "Principal Mark", and he loved being an elementary principal. The worst thing that had ever happened, until this morning, was...nothing. Nothing had ever really gone wrong in his building. Kids brought their Epi pens and never needed to use them. A few scrapes and the occasional fourth grade bully, but an appointment on his couch for a stern talking to was generally enough to stop that behavior. Of course, throughout the 20/21 year, there were issues with Covid tests, and parents refusing to comply, and coughs and sneezing and students who were compromised, and a staff of dedicated teachers who were exhausted. They had to create two separate lesson plans every day, one for the students online and one for those in the building. They were rock stars, and he showed them his gratitude in every interaction they shared. He knew they were all truly in it together. His staff called him a leader, not a boss and this year he had subbed in many classes, and expected to do so in many more. The sub shortage was just one more delightful ripple of reopening after a pandemic. Or, as some would say, while the pandemic was still raging on.
This morning he was posted at the bus line entrance, ready to greet the kindergarteners who rode in on the bus. He felt they needed to see him when they disembarked, and he would always smile and give them a thumbs up. Pre Covid, they'd received high fives from their PrinciPAL, which he liked to emphasize. As they disembarked, he smiled at each one and made sure they saw him. There should have been nine of them on the #5 bus, but he counted ten. They all looked at him and gave him a thumbs up as they started toward the building. Before he could move to stop them and count again, a car pulled up between the buses. A women emerged and ran toward of the smallest children who had just stepped off the bus. She scooped up the child and, holding her, turned and began hurling obscenities at Principal Mark. In that hysterical moment, he realized he was not her "pal".
He stood doing his best to decipher what was being said. It seemed that the child she was holding was the younger sibling of one of the students, and had gotten on the bus with her brother. How or why it happened was not as important to the parent as yelling at the principal for not being at the bus stop to manage the students, and for not driving the bus or in some other way being physically responsible for the child. Who was a younger sibling of one of the students.
The hysterical mother screamed at Principal Mark while walking toward the bus, where she screamed at the bus driver. Frightened students huddled at the entrance while teachers looked to him for guidance. He indicated they should go ahead and walk their students into class, remaining as calm as possible. The older sibling of the hysterical mom followed his class into the building, not looking behind him for even a moment. His teacher put a protective arm around his shoulders as she walked him in.
Principal Mark walked to the #5 bus to see if he could defuse the situation. The mom was clutching her child on one hip and waving her other hand at the driver,a woman in her sixties, who happened to be a retired teacher, expounding on the sub par public school system. Mark gave her a few feet of clearance, hovering and waiting for her to recognize him. When she did, she whirled her free hand back and punched him directly in the nose.
He did not react, he simply turned and walked straight to his office, where he now sat with an ice pack on his nose that the gym teacher had kindly located for him. At 38 he was a young principal. He had a degree in chemical engineering, but turned his career toward principalship after substitute teaching for a year in an elementary school. He loved the kids, and he loved the teachers. In recent years he had begun to become wary of parents, something had shifted around 2015. Of course post Covid, he was only one of a handful of principals left standing in the district. They'd also lost their Superintendent and thirty percent of their teachers. But he had held on.
As he stared at framed Master of Education diploma, a small plastic ice pack with the district logo stamped upon the cover pressed to his nose, he wondered why. Why had he held on? He sighed deeply, opened his lap top and began the incident report.
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