Wednesday, 8/13/08 (b)

Twenty minutes after the scheduled appointment, Sean Perlozzo rushed into the Principal's office and barely pausing for the usual 'how's the summer been small talk', let loose a volley of complaints about the way Clover Valley High School was being run.

Sitting back in his chair, Tierney listened, but he didn't hear anything that he hadn't heard before sometime before in his 27 years running the school. As Tierney edged towards his 60th birthday, he noticed increasing disinterest on the part of others about history ... about past lessons learned. It was as if it hadn't happened in the past 3 years, it hadn't happened at all. In times of reflection at his desk after a particularly tough staff meeting, he'd started to wonder if maybe he was just out of touch and maybe out of place in a new generation.

Creeping doubt aside, he couldn't help but find it galling that this guy who'd come directly from running an independent weekly newspaper was lecturing him on the way to run a school. The meeting to this point had been a monologue. Tierney's mind wandered "Some people simply don't feel like they've had a conversation unless they do 90% of the talking." However, Perlozzo was clearly building up to an ultimatum.

"Listen Gene, we need a department chair to oversee the way we're going about our creative writing. I'm the guy to do it. We need to get the basic principles in place in English 1 and 2. By the time they get to me, they're useless. I spend most of the year undoing the damage that's been done to them as freshmen and sophomores and I'm not going to let that go on another year. Either you make me chair of the English department, or I'm not coming back."