Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

From the Counselor's Desk

We've been at it for almost a week now, and it's beginning to look as if school is going to continue. The shock of the fire is gone, but the shock of our new relaxed dress code has begun. I'm afraid it may take me longer to adapt to that than the move to my new office quarters.

Every day there are new surprises. Early this morning, I could have sworn that I saw a boy in a skirt, but someone explained that he was wearing very baggy shorts. Shorts? They came almost to the tops of his shoes.

It used to be mid-July before girls' legs got as tanned as some of those around school. I imagine most of the tanning parlors are booked solid by now. Some of the barbers should get in on the act by offering a special on shaving some of our hairy-legged boys. To my way of thinking, that would improve things considerably. Oh, well, enough of the latest `improvements' to education.

Things are going fairly well around the campus. Having classes in distant buildings has kept students scattered, and they don't congregate in one area as they did in the lobby of the high school. That has made things a lot quieter.

In case some parents haven't located the office, it's in the old junior high building. Four of us are sharing the ISS room: the secretary, the librarian, the principal and yours very truly.

Now, two womena nd two men in such confined quarters could be a real test of Christianity. But considering that the Baptists have the Methodists outnumbered three to one, there is a faint glimmer of hope.

My problem is that the principal gets the ladies all `stirred up,' then walks out leaving me to reap the wrath of both Methodist and Baptist. I haven't located the scripture they're using, but I beleive it's found in the book of `Cosmopolitan!'

Our English department is in the money. All four English teachers are located in the gymnasium. We covered the floor of the gym with Firestone rubber and partitioned off four classrooms. Students have learned that they can flip pennies over the partitions into another class without being detected.

The first morning, one class reported taking in around 27 cents. I understand that the collectins fell off that afternoon, but custodians still sweep up money, daily. The principal has directed the English department to meet with the custodians and decide how to divide the profits.

As of this writing, we haven't had a rain. Rain should be the real test of how well things are going to work out.

We have assigned lockers in the old junior high building to those who want them and I would suggest that parents buy or encourage their children to buy a small umbrella to keep in their lockers for book bags for those rainy days. It is a long way from the elementary building to the gymnasium and on rainy days, students will get wet. They will probably even get wet with an umbrella, but not soaking wet!

Plans are moving right along for prom, senior class day and graduation. We're inconvenienced, but we're learning to do things the way they were done in `B.C.' That means, Before Computers!