A small Cessna, or maybe something even smaller, buzzes back and forth over the high school campus.  I don’t hear it at first because of the fan that I have running, trying to keep my students from melting in the humidity that pours into every corner of the room.  The air conditioning system, for what it’s worth, will not be turned on for another week, but here in rural North Carolina, it’s all ready 88 degrees at noon, and the air, though sun drenched, is heavy with water.

I am unfazed by the noise of the engine, and my students seem to be as well, when I do notice it.  Being adjacent to a major highway the state and only several hundred yards from a rail line, we are accustomed to the noise of motors. 

My back is covered with sweat and my head feels like it’s come into direct contact with a greasy slice of pizza.  My wiry, curly, bushy hair even droops, ever so slightly, over one eyebrow.  My elbows bend as my hands press into the faux-wood surface of the desk and my eyes fix to the paper in front of me. 

Evaluations, provided by the school to students, to assess performance.  These evaluations are opinion-based: “Drugs are a problem at my school” or “My teachers provide extra help when I need it”, strongly agree, agree, no opinion, disagree, strongly disagree.  There are 30 questions, but the goddamn plane is still buzzing.  My students, tediously filling in each bubble with a No. 2 pencil, are judging the condition of their educational environment.  There is space on the back for written comments. 

In your opinion, what elements make this a good high school?

“IDK”

“Just some off the staff like Mrs. ----- before the idiots let her go…FYI we actually learned alot and she was a GREAT teacher, ask anyone that had her.”

“How things goes on in the school.”

“Nothing cause it’s no way you can fix this school.”

“Nothing does because this high school sucks.”

What suggestions for improvement would you like to share with school leadership?

“Better teacher.”

“During summer online classes let the kids know what’s there test scores again about instead of just putting us in any class so they want have extra work.”  (Author's Note: We were recently informed that we have no funding this year for summer courses)

“Better teachers that all”

“Yall truly suck hot air balloons only you can prevent forest fires, Im moving

young Y T out”

These evaluations are anonymous; all that’s required is ethnicity, sex and grade level.  They were relentless in their comments, if not in their multiple-choice answers, and for that I’m proud of them. 

The plane buzzes once again and a student cracks open the blinds.

“Mr. J., come look at this.”

I shouldn't be able to smell my feet when my head is 5 feet and 8 inches off of the ground, but I do, though I take solace in the fact that perhaps the scent is lost in the bewildering, overwhelming potpourri of a classroom: body odor, skin lotion, old underwear, hair relaxer, hair activator, popcorn?, 20-year-old carpet, whatever is stuck inside the whirring fan of the LCD projector, etc.

I move and lean over the radiator unit, which spans the entire length of one wall and, above which are 6 seamless windows, the blinds drawn over all of them.  I crack the peer out, craning my neck and looking up and to the right.

It is a small Cessna and it’s tugging a large gold and green banner behind it, painted onto the banner is a glowering, “Colbert Report”-esque bald eagle and the name of a local politician.  A man running as “A True Conservative”.  The Cessna he has rented is buzzing a high school that is 85% African-American and with 20% of all students living below the poverty line.  A community where 20% of the households are run by single-mothers and the median household income stands at $29,900.

The plane advertises to a high school were the number of suspensions last year per 100 students stood at 108.

Out of our 13 performance targets for AYP (a product of “No Child Left Behind”) we reached none during the 2008-2009 school year.  Forty-six percent of our students last year took advantage of the SAT with an average score of 863.

On North Carolina’s End-of-Course examinations last year, 34.5% of our students passed all of their examinations – 57% of our white students and 25.3% of our black students.

My heart races slightly, as I watch the little airplane floating around in the airspace about our school, perhaps due to the amphetamines I have to take for my Narcolepsy, or perhaps something else.

The candidate, who shall remain nameless, is running for Congress.  He claims that any attempt to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act would be a violation of the Constitution (it violates general welfare).

He has received two Tea Party endorsements in North Carolina.

He has claimed that President Obama “brings the United States down to a position where we are not only level with the rest of the world, but also subject to subordination and restitution by other nations due to our past sins” and that “we understand why he feels more comfortable agreeing with the despots and dictators of the world rather than our traditional friends and allies.”

My students, most of them, are a-political and could not care less about the airplane.  They’ve seen airplanes before.  They do not take notice of a man who claims, like many others lately, that education should be in control of the private sector, homeschools and private schools, and that political correctness and the federal government have ruined education.

Am I making his case for him, with these descriptions of the heat, the despair, the loneliness of the teachers and the students?  My constant daily fight is perhaps an exercise in futility – and worse, maybe I’m to blame for the Sins of this nation, myself and people like me, we who drive ourselves to school at 6:30 in the morning only to serve indoctrination in the name of a supposed liberal agenda.

Maybe I'm only making myself look like a fool – a fool to believe in public education at all.  Oversight, as Ayn Rand has written in her gospels, is diabolical and megalomaniacal. 

In spite of my own feelings, this man with his American flag lapel pin, “take back America” and all, pays for his name to dance in the breeze generated by the engines of the aircraft – while below on our campus we are still waiting for cooler air.

 “If all the rich and all of the church people should send their children to the public schools they would feel bound to concentrate their money on improving these schools until they met the highest ideals.”

~ Susan B. Anthony