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School Supt. (Tiny
Tim) Jenney delays graduation ceremony
7/10/02 Editor: Subject: Bayside High School Graduation Ceremony Delayed On a sweltering hot, humid afternoon on June 14, 2002: Who would arrive fifteen minutes after the scheduled start time of the Bayside High School graduation? When the faculty coordinator of the graduation asked: “Should we go ahead and start without him?” whose administrative assistant would say: “If you want to keep your job, you won’t ask a question like that when Dr. Jenney tells you to wait.” Who would make the following people sweat it out so long: two Bayside area School Board members, the Assistant Superintendent for High Schools, three-hundred Bayside graduates, over fifty Bayside administrators and faculty, and hundreds and hundreds of parents, grandparents, other family and friends of Bayside graduates, all of the Pavilion Staff, all of the volunteers, all the police and sheriff staffs, plus a similar line-up of dignitaries and students and staff for the follow-on Green Run graduation? Who else would think that something else he was doing was more important than being at this graduation on time? Who would offer no expression of apology for the hold up of graduation, and no words of explanation of why he was late, to all those assembled and waiting? Who was the person who coerced Josh Darden to take the principal position at Bayside High School? And yet, who as the last speaker of the Bayside graduation ceremony, failed to give even one word of recognition to the retiring principal of Bayside High School, Josh Darden, for his honesty, integrity, industry, and compassion in his three years of leadership as principal of Bayside High School and for his forty years of service to the city of Virginia Beach and Virginia Beach schools? Who, if he had permitted the graduation to start on time, might have prevented hundreds of graduates, parents, and teachers from being soaked in a thunderstorm that started just after the end of the delayed graduation ceremony? Who, if he had permitted the graduation to start on time, might have prevented two Interstate-264 automobile accidents that involved Bayside graduates and in which a contributing cause was the same severe thunderstorm? Who is this person who seems to have so little concern or compassion for students, parents, teachers, school administrators, and even School Board members? Who is it that sets this kind of an example for our graduates, and their families, teachers and administrators? Name withheld by request - Virginia Beach |