Go Hornets!

Dear Faculty and Parents:

Even though it was 118 degrees last week, I think we could all feel a nip in the air. Fall has arrived and the Harrold Independent School District is beginning its 2008-09 school year. Go Hornets!

These are busy times, and I just wanted to catch you all up about the goings-on in your school district. As you may have heard, Harrold ISD received Recognized School status for the 2007-08 TAKS tests. We are proud of our teachers and students for all their hard work! And you parents deserve a lot of credit, too, for turning off the TV and getting your kids to study!

I’m also proud to say that, unlike that school in liberal Massachusetts, we at HISD have found no evidence of a pregnancy pact in our high school. The two girls who ended up pregnant last year were just acting on their own, without any kind of “pact” or “plan” going on. Like every other girl in the school district, they had been taught about abstinence and the importance of “just say no.” What can I say? Some kids just don’t want to learn!

As we start another school year, though, I do think you parents of daughters should talk to your kids and reinforce our abstinence education. Some of them may have gotten the idea that, if they become pregnant, they might end up in front of a national TV audience at a political convention with their boyfriend all cleaned up and his mullet shaved off and ready to get married and everybody cheering for them. Even though we all wish Bristol Palin and her fiance the very best, you need to remind your daughters that pregnant girls face very serious consequences, such as not being able to be on the cheerleading squad after they begin to “show.”

Well, enough of this gloom and doom! I’m sure you’re all aware that HISD has once again proven it leads the nation in protecting our kids. Yes, we’ve received a whole pile of national and international publicity for our groundbreaking decision to allow our teachers to carry guns.

We’ve felt the whole community “rally around” us for our strong stance. As Coach Edmund “Booger” Ayres – who’s taught Texas history to generations of HISD students – reminds us, what would have happened if Davy Crockett and Colonel Travis and their men hadn’t carried guns? We would have lost at the Alamo! And we’d all be speaking Spanish today!

With our new gun-toting stance so well-known, we predict that any creep with a gun won’t take our exit off U.S. Highway 287. He’ll just keep driving till he finds some school district where the peacenik administrators don’t care as much about their students’ safety. We also predict that our TAKS test scores will go up even higher, when the students realize their teachers are packing heat!

Just joking! As you know, our teachers have been well-trained to fire warning shots to get the students’ attention. Also, in case any of you are concerned, I should report that Coach Ayres has recently completed an anger management course and last year’s unfortunate incident, when he tackled our quarterback, Jimmy Hayes, and beat him to a pulp for throwing an interception, will not be repeated. As a longtime hunter and marksman, Coach Ayres can be trusted to handle a firearm in the classroom with the utmost care.

By the way, I should also add that Jimmy Hayes is no longer our quarterback and we finally have somebody good this year. Go Hornets!

Your school superintendent,David Thweatt

At the risk of overstating the obvious, this is a satire, not a real memorandum. David Thweatt really is the superintendent of the Harrold Independent School District, where the board of trustees really did approve allowing teachers to carry guns. HISD really has had good TAKS scores. We made the rest up.

Austin writer Ruth Pennebaker channeled this letter. She has nightmares about teachers and guns, and blogs at geezersisters.wordpress.com.