“We call the school our community. We have a lot of pride in our staff, a lot of pride in turning over a world-class learning environment for you guys, so when you go off into the world you’ll be able to say that you came from a good organization…
We work very hard to turn over a world class facility for you guys, and when it gets mistreated and just dumped on – magic marker, things broken, shaving cream, trash barrels dumped over, spills all over the place – you’re beginning to get into the disrespect area and you’re getting out of the fun…
The cleanup after [the shaving cream fight], [custodian] Armando [Bairas] and those guys spent an hour or so out there at night. The next morning we spent another hour, two or three people…. Just remember that at the end of the day.
We work hard to keep this place safe, and some of the risk-taking we see – whether they get up on the rotunda, they get up on the roof, they damage the facilities, they damage doors and windows – it begins to affect us…
Every year it gets scarier, it gets more dangerous. Somebody’s going to fall off the back of a pickup truck. Somebody’s going to split their head open. Somebody’s going to get run over, because he’s not paying attention and he’s running away from somebody else….
I don’t want to punish and criticize everybody… 15 students after the parade came back to me with real sincere, “Can I help you? Awesome job.” Even the kids that made some poor decisions, they worked with us today, they’re working with us, and I’ll tell you that they’re great kids. One night of being a knucklehead: learn from that. When you go to college, there will be other challenges out there. We want you to learn from it, and we want you to be safe…
We want the kids to have fun. We wish that we could push back to you to say, “Hey, make some good choices, have some fun but have a little respect and have a balance there.” Because next year, if we could keep getting a little bit better, then we all can win.”
Reported by Dan Fishbein