Exit Strategy

Today is the last day of school. Well, it’s the last day for the students at least. We still have that dreaded last day for the teachers tomorrow. Anyway, this last day will be conducted differently than past last days for the kids. On the final bell of the today we are instructed to perform—a fire drill.

That’s right. When that bell rings, we are to line up the kids and lead them out the nearest exit, take them as far as the tree line outside as if being released back into the wild and then return to the exits to stand guard against re-entry attempts until the administrators can come and lock the doors.

The idea is that we will sidestep the headache of the students’ impression of a prison riot that is normally found at the end of the last day. Nope, they will just be extradited to the summer break. There will be no final pass by lockers. There will be no delinquent demo of any bathrooms. There will be no final sexual misconduct in their favorite sex cranny.

I wonder if the stuff in the lockers that the students left behind would go to some sort of auction like the police have for seized property for the teachers. That would be kind of cool. Unfortunately, instead of cigarette boats and bill counting machines, we would probably just get kids’ lucky condoms, prescriptions swiped from parents’ medicine cabinets and un-opened school supplies.