Chapter 41: School Shuffles

Sunday, October 2, 1983

I called Michael just after lunch and before Study Group and, wonder of wonders, actually got him. I caught him up on much of the DC trip (while omitting the details of meeting Reagan and letting it seem like we’d only spoken briefly).

He was cagey about what he was up to, simply saying that he had a ‘side project’ and that it was taking a lot of time. Unless this timeline was completely wacky, that ‘side project’ was PCs Limited, aka Dell. I worked in the idea that I’d have some money kicking around when the lawsuit wrapped up, and would be looking for investing advice.

Odds were that I had him somewhat hooked, but I’d still have to make him a very tempting offer when it came time. Selling a percent (even literally just one percent) of your company is hard, but he’d know as well as I did that a cash infusion would enable him to grow far more rapidly.

At least we had the lines of communication solidly open. Sometimes that’s all you can do. He could still say no, at which point that was that. There were stocks that would pay off far better than Dell’s would when the company went public, after all. The big win was getting in before anyone seriously thought of it being a publicly traded company in the future.

Gene repeated all of the news about his parents in Study Group. Nothing much had changed, except that it was a bit more concrete that Marsha would move in January (and would be gone about half of the time between now and then). She was flying out tomorrow to help with the move.

Pretty much, we just studied, but I had a strong feeling there would be some naps on Tuesday. Fortunately, this wasn’t an exam week.

I gave Laura a quick call after Study Group to keep her up to date. She was amused that I’d won Homecoming King. That was, apparently, a perfectly ‘Asshole Steve’ thing to do — but being humble about it wasn’t. Not at all.

Monday, October 3, 1983

If I hadn’t already been through a ‘celebrity’ period, today would’ve been a lot weirder than it was. I had people calling me ‘Your Majesty’ off and on. Most of them were playful about it, but the socialites were sarcastic or downright angry. I’d expected to wind up with some unhappy people, and that was clearly the case.

Mike gave me a half-embarrassed little look at one point when we passed in the halls, but that was it. Trish, on the other hand, pretended not to see me at all the two times we came near each other.

My guess was that there would be trouble, but it would come from an unexpected direction at an unexpected time. Jess was much more likely than I was to see it coming.

After school, I quickly drove over to the district’s administrative offices. When I walked in, the secretary apparently recognized me, smiled, and nodded toward Cam’s office.

When I went in, I found Cam, Carl Brandt, and Scott (whose last name I still hadn’t caught, somehow) waiting in his office.

“Three of you?” I said, smiling, shaking Cam’s hand, then the others. “Are we violating Open Meeting laws?”

Cam chuckled. “No, though that’s a smart question. We’re not doing business and we’ve already communicated with the other members. I’m pretty sure we’re covered.”

That seemed just a bit dubious to me, but I was also certain the odds of anyone calling them on it were low. I suspected the school board did a lot more bending of the Open Meeting laws than this, in fact.

“Please, have a seat,” Cam said, and we all did. He’d placed a chair in front of his desk for himself, thus putting us all on a more equal footing. I appreciated that.

“So,” he said, once we were all seated, “this is an unusual meeting. I’m not sure when we’ve last involved a high school senior in something like this, but I know it’s an issue near and dear to your heart.”

I nodded. “If we’re talking about grade points, then, yes, it is.”

“We are,” he said. The others nodded.

“On that subject, you’d proposed a few ideas?”

“Definitely,” I said, nodding. “Prior to our discussion at the musical, some of us on the Student Council were considering proposing a recommendation that some activities be treated the way Band is and allowed to replace PE. That’s a huge stopgap, but even that is really pushing it for being in Student Council’s purview. At least with Band there’s somewhat of an inequity there.”

All three of them nodded.

“My concern, at first, was that we might be seen as deemphasizing academics,” Carl said. “I mean, the whole point was to encourage people to take harder, more challenging classes.”

“Of course,” I said, “but...”

Scott jumped in. “We know what you’re going to say, I think. Unless we offer honors Debate and Drama and Computer Math and all of the other electives that appeal to the same pool of kids who might want honors sciences and languages and math and so forth, we’re forcing kids to choose between class rank and some very beneficial ‘academic’ electives.”

“Exactly,” I said.

Cam nodded. “Looking at it, we think that there’s probably some limit. If we assume English, Math, Government or History, and Science are good, and add a foreign language, that’s five out of seven. We could make the other two slots ineligible for honors credit. That lets everyone have one elective, except for those whose electives overlap PE. They’d get two. It’s not entirely fair, but ... better.”

I nodded. “It sounds better to me.”

Scott said, “I’m proposing one further twist. We make the fifth slot half credit, between a regular class and an honors class. Not the first year, but one year later. If foreign languages — which are the big losers — take too much of a hit, we’ll reverse that. Mind you, that’s not set. I still need to convince the others.”

Carl nodded. “In any case, we’re planning on selecting a plan late this fall. Then we’ll announce it, and it’ll go into effect next fall. It won’t affect any current seniors, and the other students will have a full semester to assess it and decide how they want to respond. No one will lose out on classes they’ve already taken.”

“I like that,” I said. “I’d hate to benefit from it myself. Many people have gone to a lot of trouble to compete for the highest rankings based on the rules as they are, and they deserve to be rewarded.”

They all nodded.

“That doesn’t make a lot of difference on our end, but I can understand why you’d take that approach,” Cam said.

“Keep it under your hats,” I said, “but I’m almost certainly going to a state school. Top ten percent at Memorial will easily get me in, especially with my likely SAT score. I’ll leave those nuances at the very top to the kids who are vying for the Ivy League.”

They chuckled, and then Carl asked, “And how many of your fellow debaters are aiming for the Ivies?”

“Um...” I said. “At least two, but quite possibly three or four. My bet is that they’ll make it, too.”

Cam nodded, then said, “Which will, of course, make all of us in the district happy.”

“I imagine so,” I said.

Cam said, “I’ve got one personal thing for Steve, so hang back, please. I think we’re done otherwise.

“Thank you for inviting me. I’m happy to help,” I said, while trying to figure out what he meant. The DC trip came to mind.

“One more thing — would you be okay with us paraphrasing some of your comments when introducing the grade point changes?” Scott said. “It’s unusual, and should be helpful, to have someone with your profile be on record in favor of something like this.”

“Again, I’m happy to help. Depending on the paraphrase, I might want to hear it, and Dad might want to take a look, but even so, I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“We’ll run it past you first,” Scott said.

“Thanks!”

We shook hands and the meeting broke up, with Scott and Carl leaving. They closed the door behind them, and I smiled to Cam.

“This is very much a keep-it-under your hat discussion.” Cam said, “I think you’ll likely have an interesting perspective, especially since you’re graduating and likely won’t have an ax to grind here.”

“Mum’s the word, of course.”

He sighed, then said, “We’ve made the difficult decision that we need to close Spring Branch. Most likely Westchester, too. They will both stay open through the 1984-5 school year — we want to give students time to decide how to handle their futures. The question is: how do we handle the fallout? Physically, zoning Spring Branch into Memorial makes the most sense, but that would overcrowd Memorial. We were thinking of splitting the kids between all of the other high schools, but we’re looking at districts around us and many of them are channeling kids into one ‘high-end’ school.”

I nodded. “Obviously, Debate isn’t the priority here, though it certainly could affect us.”

Cam nodded, but waited.

“So, sports. If you sent everyone to Memorial, it would greatly improve the pool of players for football, for instance. Most likely you’d wind up with a totally imbalanced district but Memorial doing well in the playoffs.”

He nodded again.

“My bet is that the UIL will, sooner or later, create a class 6A for these large schools. That would balance things out — eventually. But there’s another option.”

The UIL (University Interscholastic League) governed almost all competitions between high schools in Texas, including Debate and Drama.

Cam smiled. “Probably the one we’re thinking of.”

“My guess, then, is that you’re thinking of splitting the kids but allowing open transfers in-district.”

“Exactly. The UIL may crack down on that, too, but there’s precedent that doing it at the junior high to high school transition is fine.”

I hesitated, then said, “You’re going to need to lay the groundwork on this. Memorial technically has a large minority population, but the demographics are far from those that Spring Branch has. There will be friction. My friend Calvin’s dad is a millionaire and plays on TV, and he’s gotten a considerable amount of harassment. And, by the way, that’s also a keep-it-under-your-hat comment.”

“He has?”

“He has,” I said, nodding. “Now, he’d probably be upset with me for mentioning it, and he would be really upset if anyone did anything about it on his behalf. But that’s Calvin, that’s not everyone. The vast majority of kids at Memorial have gone their entire school careers without having someone from ‘the wrong side of the tracks’ in their school, and Spring Branch is literally on the other side of the tracks. Most people at Memorial would say it’s the wrong side. You’re not going to fix that at the elementary or junior high level. The groundwork has to go in as soon as possible to help at the high school level. I don’t know what the groundwork is, mind you. Calvin’s one of only a few African-American kids that I know, too.”

“Are we ... um ... guilty of thinking that we don’t have a problem simply because there’s been no way for us to have a problem?” Cam said. I think he was thinking to himself.

“Probably?” I said. “I’ve got one more thought related to that, though.”

“Shoot.”