By Jeremy D. Wells
Carter County Times
Parents may complain about mask mandates, non-traditional instruction, and other aspects of the school system. But it’s not as bad as it was in 1987, when repeated complaints about the principal at Lawton Elementary led not only to calls for her ouster, but to the elementary school cafeteria being firebombed by a Molotov cocktail.
Complaints stretched back as far as the start of the year, when two eighth grade students were disciplined over an altercation. Both students wrote letters to the editor about the situation, with one student, the one who punched the other, accepting his punishment for his role in the fight. The other student, however, wrote a second letter to the editor claiming he had been further punished – by being expelled from the Spirit Club – after writing his first letter criticizing the principal and staff of the school for their handling of the fight.
One month later, in April of 1987, the paper reported further attempts to take action against the principal, Mrs. Larna Cotten. A parent approached the board with a petition she said contained 169 signatures calling for Cotten’s removal. The petition criticized Cotten for what it saw as excessive disciplinary action in the school, which some parents said caused their children anxiety. Other parents, however, defended Cotten’s work in the school.
While the board rejected the first petition, that didn’t stop parents from bringing another petition the following month, this one also rejected by the board. Petitions were also rejected a third and fourth time, while complaints expanded to include a recreational shooting program that allowed some students to fire guns without parental approval.
It all came to a head in August, when frustrations reached such a level that someone tried to burn down the school building. According to reports from the AP, who covered the attempted arson, the broken Molotov cocktail bottle was discovered while staff were evaluating needed repairs to the roof, along with four more plastic jugs that had contained gasoline. Staff surveying the damage to the burned building and the roof of the standing building, where the jugs were found, said standing water on the roof helped stop the spread of the fire to the rest of the school. Had flames reached the other gasoline jugs, they said, the entire school building would have been lost.
It’s one way to protest an unpopular principal, but it seems to be the epitome of the phrase, “cut off your nose to spite your face.”
We’re glad that, no matter how heated disagreements become about school policy today, parents and teachers haven’t reached this level of protest yet. Let’s hope they never do again.
Contact the writer at editor@cartercountytimes.com
