Heavy Hangs the Head
by aishuu
Spoilers: Through Prom Queen
Warnings: Offensive language, homophobia, educational politics
Notes: The "Air Supply" tweak is a deliberate "reinterpretation."

You're already cranky because your favorite local band, Heir Supply, has canceled on you. The group returned your deposit yesterday, explaining that they had just gotten a gig at a shotgun wedding that paid three times as much. Now you get to deal with two of your most troubling staff members when you should be working the grant proposal for three new buses.

You step back to let William and Sue into your office, struggling to keep your omnipresent headache from increasing. You have a hundred other things to do in lieu of mediating the latest salvo of their ongoing grudge war. But despite their dramatics, they're also two of the best members of your staff, and you have to address the latest crisis with them.

Maybe this is for the best. You should have thought of having the Glee Club perform in the first place. Not only will it be half as expensive (you can use the savings to replace some Bunsen burners that were destroyed during Monday's freshmen chem class), but it will also help you support the Glee Club's trip to nationals.

It's win-win.

Sue doesn't seem to think so, but that's no surprise. Sue doesn't think anything involving the Glee Club is win-win, unless you're talking about disbanding it and returning the funding to the Cheerios. As expected, she makes her objections known, but you put your foot down. It's your name on the door, and she can't overrule you in this.

Her acquiescence is grudging. You only listen with half an ear as Sue begins to list the songs which the Glee Club is not to perform. While she's being belligerent, you privately have to admit she has a point about the Club sometimes displaying poor musical tastes.

Hopefully her words will get under William's skin and encourage him to show more discretion. You don't have time to micromanage what the Glee Club is doing.

You make a point to get out into the hallway during passing period a couple of times a week, especially since your recent encounters with Burt Hummel. It's difficult, since there's so many other demands on your time, but you have to be able to prove him wrong about how safe McKinley is for his son.

Realistically speaking, there's no way you can guarantee how the students will treat each other. Bullying is part of human nature; it's something that all ages engage in. It's not something that will magically go away just because a bunch of people start posting videos to youtube, but since it's the current "it" topic, you have to make a token effort.

Especially with Kurt Hummel back in the picture. A part of you wishes he'd stayed away, because he adds yet another problem to your overloaded plate. He's one of the most academically gifted students in his grade, but he's also your school's poster child for the gays. You don't really blame the other students for not liking him, since you're not too fond of gay people, either. Nothing will ever convince you that gay is "natural."

And Kurt is so... swishy.

You should care more about Kurt, but you can admit to yourself privately that you don't. You don't care about many of the students in your school, to be truthful. You're not a teacher and don't interact with them on a regular basis. Students don't come back to visit you, and you're not the one they remember as an influence, despite the fact that your decisions shape their entire high school careers more than any single class they've taken.

As if your thoughts have summoned them, you see David walking down the hall with Kurt, wearing the very red outfit of the newly formed Bully Whips, and can't help but smile. You like seeing students find solutions to their own conflicts, especially when it doesn't cost the school anything. Kurt doesn't look happy, but happiness is not your concern. You watch them, noting that no one else approaches them.

As they turn the corner, you step back into your fishbowl of an office, relieved that one potential crisis is under control. You can ignore the hiss of whispers that follow in their wake, and pretend you don't hear that one hockey player murmur about the damn fags taking over the school.

Bullying only exists when it's reported. If it's not down on paper, you don't have to address it.

You're up at five on the morning of prom, just like you are every other day. You're a morning person and do most of your best work before breakfast. Today is going to be exceptionally long since you're going to have to be on campus until after the prom is over to lock up the building. You're probably not going to get to sleep until well after two tomorrow morning, and that's if everything goes well.

Things rarely go well. You're always anticipating the worst, because that way you can only be pleasantly surprised.

You work on your laptop for several hours. You've got to report to the school board on Monday, and you're not looking forward to it. Part of Monday's agenda involves swearing in the new school board members – two of whom ran on a "reform" platform. Unfortunately the only requirement to become a member of the board is that a person is eighteen years old and lives within the district.

You go through this every year. Some idiot decides they're the one to fix things by chopping the budget to lower taxes and/or expanding educational options for the student body, not recognizing that the school board is only one small cog in the vast picture. They'll learn how powerless they are to effect change on the local level, but you're going to suffer until they do. Everyone wants someone to blame, and you're the target of their frustration.

You remind yourself it could be worse. Two districts over, your colleague is going to have to deal with a current student who was elected over the former board president. It makes great press to have a student on the school board, but it's probably not a good thing from the practical standpoint.

There are times when you wish people understood there's a reason why it's your name on the door. You know the standard jokes about principals being failed teachers, but there's not an ounce of truth in it. You have a masters in educational administration and leadership, and you're only your thesis away from earning your doctorate, which you will never have time to complete.

Time is your most precious commodity, and it's limited by the demands of your job. You don't know many members of your student body. You take care of the student body, not individual students.

The only students you know are the members of the student council, the ones who have been discipline problems, and the ones with disabilities. You spend a lot of time creating plans for students who have special needs, to the point where you internally groan whenever you find out you're going to get another one. It's not that you don't like them or feel they have the right to the best education they can get, but the work involved in seeing to their individual needs is intensive... not to mention the additional costs each special needs student brings to the budget.

You have to do your best to balance the needs of the few with the needs of the many while meeting your legal obligations. Educational law is a complicated morass that no one completely understands. The periodic audits and inspections the state and feds conduct inevitably turn up shortcomings, because it's impossible to meet all regulations.

You will never vote Republican again, at least as long as No Child Left Behind exists. You sometimes have nightmares about the mandated reporting and testing, knowing that you're supposed to have all of your students proficient in reading and math by 2014. McKinley, like more than eighty percent of the schools in the nation, won't meet that goal. The question isn't if you will fail, but how abysmally McKinley will compare to the rest of the state and nation.

As you finish up the outline, you shut your eyes and allow yourself a sigh. Tonight is going to be a headache, full of teen drama, but you're looking forward to it. Prom is one of your favorite events of the year, because it reminds you that you're doing this for the students. Despite all the hoops and endless paperwork and mandates, you believe in what you're doing.

Prom begins at eight, which means the students start trickling in around seven to claim tables and take pictures of the tacky decorations. A couple arrive already toasted, and you shut your eyes and your mouth. You don't have proof, which means you can't eject them, so the best you can do is keep them safe and hope they remember the scare tactic assembly the police conducted on Thursday about the dangers of drunk driving. You don't want to see McKinley show up in tomorrow's headlines due to losing a car full of students after prom.

Sue stands in front of her fabled punchbowl, watching with suspicious eyes as the room begins to fill. Sue, you think, is the kind of legendary teacher students will remember for the rest of their lives. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on the student in question.

She's done a good job of coordinating prom on the limited budget you gave her. Her Ipod is playing until the Glee Club begins its performances, and you shiver a little as I Am Woman blares out over the speakers. No one's broken the ice and hit the dance floor yet, but you know from experience it won't be long. It's still too early for the students to feel anything but overwhelmed by attending this major milestone.

By eight, the students have begun to dance, and the Glee Club takes the stage. The club isn't going to perform any group numbers to enable them all to have a chance to enjoy their prom, but the solos and small groups will be enough to keep things moving. The club has a lot of extremely talented members, and you always enjoy hearing them perform.

Noah Puckerman, Artie Abrams and a third student (you think he transferred in this year, but you're not sure) take to the stage and start singing about Friday. It's a weird choice since tonight is Saturday, but the crowd seems to like it.

You allow yourself to bounce a little to the beat of the song. Despite your ongoing argument with William about your lack of support for the arts, you love music. You know it would surprise him to learn that you actually have a very decent singing voice. But although you love the arts, William doesn't understand the harsh reality of educational funding that is your life. You're always struggling to meet the mandated requirements, and anything that isn't mandated will always be a potential cut should the numbers not balance. You know the importance of the arts, but the law doesn't. Unfortunately, you have to be the hatchet man. It's why you're so pleased to have the Glee Club perform to earn funding for their New York trip.

The other performances are just as engaging. You wander around the gym, clearing your throat occasionally to interrupt students who are getting too physical with each other. You're on the other side of the gym when a fight breaks out, but Sue appears like an avenging angel, tearing the combatants apart before you can reach them.

It's a fairly typical prom. As the time approaches for coronation, you meet the members of the prom committee to collect the results. The small trio hands off the envelope and darts away without saying anything, and you roll your eyes. The students' absolute terror of being anywhere near the school's principal is longstanding.

You go to the stage to announce the results. This is one of the fun parts of your job.

You're pleased to see David's name, and announce it with a sincere pleasure. David has been a problem over the past few months, but he's made remarkable strides. It's always nice to see students make a positive change in themselves, and getting crowned king can only serve as further affirmation that David is doing the right thing.

You playfully snatch the scepter back, before handing it over and beaming as David thrusts it into the air triumphantly. You like it when the student body does something good.

That pleasure goes away moments later as you pull out the results for prom queen. You stare at the name on the sheet, somehow not surprised but immensely disappointed. The boy is a queen – anyone looking at him can see that – but this isn't a playful gesture of affection. You don't think most of the students really want to hurt Kurt, so it's likely this is meant as a prank. Few of them are smart enough to realize how cruel this is.

For a second, you're tempted to announce one of the girls on the stage, just arbitrarily pick a name and crown a girl. But you can't remember any of their names, so that's not an option. Besides, the three members of the prom committee who were responsible for tallying the votes already know the official results. This isn't a secret you can keep.

You can't void the results, anyway. There's nothing in the voting regulations outlining gender requirements. The prom queen only has to be a member of the junior class who isn't on academic probation. And wasn't there that school in California that elected a boy prom queen? The last thing you want is the ACLU coming down on you for gender bias. You know Burt Hummel is going to end up in your office first thing Monday morning, but you'd rather deal with one irate parent than face down the ACLU.

The student body voted for this, and you can't justify annulling their decision just because it's a bad one. Maybe this can serve as a teachable moment, because good members of society need to understand that their actions have consequences. You wonder if tonight is the night that McKinley will burn to the ground in a telekinetically fueled rage.

The pause is starting to grow too long, and you need to do something. You need to announce the Prom Queen.

It's your job to announce the winner the students selected, and not look into their motivation. So you read the boy's name aloud, knowing you're enabling the abuse, but understanding that there is nothing you can do to stop it.

The silence that greets Kurt's name can only be described as stunned. The goodwill of prom is sapped away in an instant, and you can't help but feel that some of your students deserve to have their night ruined. The uncomfortable realization of how very not funny this "prank" is better than any punishment you could mete out.

As Kurt Hummel flees the room, you force yourself not to feel guilty. You must follow the rules. It is up to others to determine the fairness of them. That, more than anything, is the duty of a school administrator. Your hands are tied - and clean of any of the blood that will be spilled because of it.