Sunday rerun: She thought it would be something sweet to do

Just one quick reading of Heather Cagle's information page on the Catoosa, Oklahoma, Public Schools website makes me shudder for her spelling and grammar deficiencies, but that's not why the school board down there tied a can to her this fall.

Ms Cagle taught 6th grade math, and was yearbook advisor, at Wells Middle School right up until the day in October when she decided it would be a great idea to treat the kids to some WalMart candy. 

That was a good idea.  Kids love candy.  What wasn't so good about the idea was to take the students off school grounds to the WalMart in her Honda Accord. 11  - eleven! - students, 12 to 15 years of age.

It's like the old "how do you get four elephants in a Volkswagen? joke (Two in the front seats, two in the back) but the clearly resourceful Ms Cagle had two kids in the front with her (I presume she was doing the driving), seven in the back, and two girls in the trunk.

This also sounds like one of those college student stunts from the 1950s.  Before they had XBox and Play Station to fool away the hours, students would see how many of themselves they could shoehorn into a phone booth, or they would eat live goldfish, or dance for seven days and nights.

Someone dropped a dime on Ms Cagle, and the local school board voted 4-1 to fire her for taking the kids off school grounds without parental permission. 

Always dignified, Ms Cagle posts a picture
from a lighter moment for her students to enjoy

I love this ungrammatical quote from her attorney, Richard O'Carroll: "There wasn't any danger and it was a farce. All you got to do is cry a lawsuit or something these days."

There's nothing a lawyer hates more than a lawsuit or something.

In a related development, when I was in high school, I was often summoned to the office, where the vice principal would hand me a dollar with the instructions to go to the nearby drug store and get him a pack of Kents and a large Coke, "and get yourself something too."  No one asked my parents if it was ok for me to wander off school grounds.  They would probably have been shocked to find I was there in the first place.