One School's Very Faint Brush With Education Pop Stars: A "Special" Non-Report

The staff and students knew early yesterday morning that it would be a very special day at my school. Parked in the front parking lot was a giant white bus, featuring a sizable picture of the music artist known as "Ludacris". Surrounding the tour bus was the standard array of police cruisers. The entire entourage arrived before me, but reports were it was a quite a site as they drove up to the building on Lomas and Girard.

Several parents contacted my school yesterday morning asking if Ludacris was indeed on campus.

Only it wasn't a tour bus for "Ludacris". It was instead a bus for a large group of dignitaries, including Albuquerque mayor Martin Chavez and APS superintendent Winston Brooks, to tool around APS School Board District #4 checking out schools before coming back to my own place of employ for a "District Relations Committee Meeting".

And yes, the big name/picture on the bus was "Ludacris". You can't make this stuff up folks.

What I must admit is made up would be any real news I can provide regarding the event. My only contact with any of the busload of "important" people was having APS Board Member Robert Lucero pass some of my film students and me in the hall, while a student danced maniacally with a jester's hat on his head.

The student danced with this hat on while I repeatedly told him "crazy, crazier dance please...more legs, more thrashing". The dancing was part of a student music video for the Beatles "With a Little Help From My Friends".

After waiting until the film crew working with the dancing student said "cut", Lucero and mini-entourage scooted past us down the hall. I did my best to avoid any eye contact whatsoever, only glancing long enough to see that Lucero had that same semi-demonic smile he seems to permanently countenance. I should have asked him to dance for us with the jester's hat on, but wimped out and instead almost strained my neck making sure of zero eye contact.

And that's it. I can report nothing else from the meeting held about 100 ft. and two walls away from my classroom. I did read the Journal this morning, and it appears that at the meeting Superintendent Brooks did make the following comparison between golf and standardized test scores:

"Rio Grande getting 50 percent gains? That's not doable. That's like saying I'm going to shoot a 10-under-par the next time I play golf."

I'll have to trust the Journal that Brooks really said that. I wouldn't know. 98% of my school colleagues and I weren't there. The only real impact the dignitary shindig had on me or my classes was a few in-class references made to "guys in suits in the building", what those "guys in suits" would think of certain references made in my students creative writing pieces, and about five minutes of my prep I wasted trying to get a picture of the "Ludacris" bus.

Damn....the bus had moved. No picture.

That's it, folks. Sorry for the lack of journalistic investigation. I'm sure some pretty darn important stuff was discussed, some of it even about my school. But I and 98% of my colleagues wouldn't know. All we can tell you is that a "Ludacris" event took place near us yesterday. Just how "Ludacris", we can't tell you.