gat

close watch on three well-dispersed holes in the floor. I offered to repair the holes again at my
own expense, pointing out in a reasonable tone that this easy solution was still available and that,
in my opinion, there were traces of insanity in allowing any protocol, however well meant, to
delay solving the problem at once before another fecal bombardment was unleashed.
At that moment I had no idea that I was challenging an invisible legion of salarymen it had taken a
century to evolve. I only wanted to spare myself those cries from below. My request was denied
and I was reminded again not to take matters into my own hands. Five months later a repair was
effected by a team of technicians. In the meantime, however, my classroom door lock had been
broken and three panes of window glass facing Columbus Avenue shattered by vandals. The
repair crew turned a deaf ear to what I felt was a pretty sensible request to do all the work at
once, none of it complicated. The technicians were on a particular mission I was told. Only it had
been duly authorized.
Commenting on the whole genus of such school turf wars, the New York Observer’s Terry
Golway said, "Critical decisions are made in a bureaucrat’s office far from the site requiring
repairs. One official’s decision can be countermanded by another’s, and layer upon layer of
officialdom prolongs the process. A physical task that requires a couple of minutes work can take
weeks, if not months, to snake through the bureaucracy. In the meantime the condition may
worsen, causing inconvenience to children and teachers. In the end, no one is accountable."
Thanks to Mr. Golway, I found out why the missile attack had been allowed to continue.
In my case, the problem lay in the journey of my original note to the custodian, where it was
translated into form P.O. 18. P.O. 18 set out on a road which would terminate in an eventual
repair but not before eight other stops were made along the way and 150 days had passed. A
study of these eight stops will provide a scalpel to expose some of the gangrenous tissue of
institutional schooling. Although this is New York City, something similar is found everywhere
else the government school flag waves. I think we must finally grow up enough to realize that
what follows is unavoidable, endemic to large systems.
Stop One: P.O. 18 was signed by the principal, who gave a copy to his secretary to file,
returning the original to the custodian. This typically takes several days.
Stop Two: The custodian gave a copy of the form to his secretary to file, then
sent the request on to a District Plant Manager (DPM), one of thirty-one in
New York City.
Stop Three: In an office far removed from my perforated floor, the DPM
assigned the repair a Priority Code. Three or four weeks had now passed from
the minute a ball bearing bounced off Paul Colon’s head and a turd splattered
in gooey fragments on Rosie Santiago’s desk. 1 A copy of P.O. 18 was given to
the DPM’s secretary to file, and the form went to the Resource Planning
Manager (RPM), based in Long Island City.
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