PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

"Feared Disciplinarian Spudy Retires After 36 Years" at Penn Trafford
by Rako Wednesday, Jul. 26, 2006 at 2:52 AM

School Beatings are Banned. A Principal Retires. Coincidence?

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Book banning is just one more event in a long history of ultra-backwardness coming out of Penn-Trafford.
(Penn Trafford's Book Ban Threaten's Enlightened Thought http://pittsburgh.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/23176.php )

The school has the lowest paid teachers in the state. Is the teachers' strike still ongoing? It is a mix of both rednecks and wealthy ultra-conservatives, closer culturally to Greence County, which voted for the pro-slavery candidate Breckinridge, not Lincoln in 1860.

According to the Penn Trafford Star, Penn Trafford's "feared disciplinarian" (aka sadistic) principal retired this summer. This would not be the first instance I know of when sadistic teachers retired after they could no longer beat students. The paper does not say he retired as a result of the change, but I doubt it is a coincidence.

"Spudy also is infamous for paddling his students well after other administrators had abandoned the practice. In fact, it was only in thelast few years after corporal punishment was banned from schools that Spudy gave up the paddle."

The article's last statement above is incorrect. It was only LAST YEAR after beatings were abolished that he was forced to stop.

What brings a reporter to describe a retiring teacher as "infamous" and "feared," when so often strict principals have been described in the media as "caring but stern" etc.
The principal must have been exceptionally mean, as the reporter implies.

Note his child's statement that "They say I bet your dad used the paddle. The truth is, that never happened in our house." Do you believe that their "infamous" father decided to "spare the rod" when raising energetic 9 year olds?

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the High school beat about 10 students a year, but it was not allowed in elementary school (get that?). The superintendent predicted another 10 students would be beaten in the 2005-2006 term, but the new laws put a stop to that!

A girl who went to highschool at Penn Trafford said that the principal's speech at the high school graduation ceremony was a condemnation of bad behavior and drug use, etc. in the spirit of "Happy Graduation: You Are Bad Students!"

Of course the sadistic environment was bound to affect the students and spawn "Principal Spudy Wannabees":

Plea reached in student paddling case
http://www.corpun.com/usi00302.htm
Two Penn-Trafford High School seniors reached a plea agreement Thursday that would give them probation and drop more serious charges in the alleged kidnapping and paddling of freshmen.

What Penn Trafford's troubled youth need is some serious therapy sessions to deal with their tramatic environment. Or better yet, bussing to another school district.

Sources:

"Feared Disciplinarian Spudy Retires After 36 Years"
http://www.gatewaynewspapers.com/penn-traffordstar/news/62301

State ban on paddling unruly students not yet approved by March 09, 2005
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05068/468325.stm

PENN-TRAFFORD School District's "beating plan" specified for the 2005-2006 year.
http://www.penntrafford.org/studentrights.htm

Counties
by Rako Wednesday, Jul. 26, 2006 at 1:39 PM

By the time the state government banned school beatings in the winter of 2005, only 3 school districts were still doing it: Waynesburg in Greene County, Pnn-Trafford, and Redbank in Armstrong County.