In a bold move to remedy the school’s shortage of teachers, bus drivers and other personnel, Principal Jesse Casey announced Tuesday that East will be expelling roughly half of its students.
“We have notified the families of 702 students that their child can no longer attend East,” Casey said. “It was a difficult choice, but a necessary one. Now, we have enough staff members to meet the needs of all the students.”
For the sake of fairness, the choice of which students were expelled came down to a simple assessment of their academic merits—that is to say, their GPAs. Those ranked in the bottom 50 percent of their class have been asked to return their Chromebooks and, after that, to never again return to the school building.
“I was honestly shocked,” said former senior Misty Rhee. “I thought I was doing really well in school; I had all A’s. But I guess I just didn’t take enough AP classes.”
Though the recent mass expulsion has lightened the burden on many of East’s thinly stretched staff members, it has also come with some unintended consequences.
“When I showed up to teach my class yesterday, there was nobody left,” said one anonymous arts teacher. “None of my students were in the top 50 percent of their class. So, now it looks like I’m teaching AP Spanish.”
However, Principal Casey stresses that the benefits of halving the studentry far outweigh the scheme’s drawbacks.
“We will be feeling the positive effects of this move for a very, very long time,” Casey said. “For instance, since the workload for all of the teachers has been reduced by half, we’ve also been able to reduce their salaries by half. We’re gonna save so much money!”
Photo by Jordan Huang/The ECHO
