Torches and Pitchforks at Rio Grande High School

Several hundred students walked out of their classes at Rio Grande High School yesterday. They were protesting their exclusion from the decision making process that replaced two administrators as their school.

They are on firm philosophical ground. As students, they are expected to model and promote the Pillars of Character Counts!. According to various of the six Pillars, stakeholders have a right to meaningful participation in decision making that affects their interests.

What does participation mean exactly? That varies from situation to situation of course, but at the very least would include sharing of timely and accurate information about any administrative changes at their school.

APS Supt Winston Brooks, by his own deliberate choice, is not honestly accountable to the higher standards of ethical conduct that he enforces upon students. He holds them accountable for their respect for the rights of others, yet will not hold himself accountable as a role model of the same standard.



Brooks and the rest of the leadership of the APS have not been actually accountable as role models, and removed even the pretense of it, when they removed the Role Modeling Clause from their own standards of conduct. It used to read;

In no case shall the standards of conduct for an adult,
be lower than the standards for students.

John Kennedy is credited with the observation;

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible,
make violent revolution inevitable.

If Brooks had showed any respect at all for the stakeholders at RGHS, there would not have been the need for students to rise up in protest.

As a result of the student demonstration, ten of them have been granted an audience with Brooks. Not that it will do any good, the skunk is not going to change it's stripe, but you have to give the kids credit for standing up for what they believe in.

Perhaps their example will not be lost on the adults in their community.




photo Mark Bralley