Administrative Buffoonery: Principal Photoshop

One Louisiana elementary school excluded portraits of its special education students from the school yearbook:

MANDEVILLE, La. -- If you look at the yearbook for one St. Tammany Parish elementary school, you won't see all of the students.

Parents said portrait shots of special education students with learning disabilities were left out of Pontchartrain Elementary School's yearbook. Instead, there are only candid shots of the students.

"Being her last year at the school, it seems pretty hard for her to have a yearbook with no picture of her in it," father Gil Cacho said.

Special education students who are considered gifted were included, though.

The principal has apologized for the omission, and according to the school board, she's working to rectify the problem.

"She's investigating a number of options about what she can do to reprint pages from the yearbook," Linda Roan of the St. Tammany Parish School Board said.

But parents said a pattern has been developing for years and that they've voiced numerous concerns.

"You know the saying 'the straw that broke the camel's back'? I think this camel's kind of done, and it seems like the ability to talk to them, to sit down and have a conversation has not helped anything," mother Jolie Cocho said.

Over on Ponchetrain Elementary's website, Principal "Dr." Kathleen Wiseman has nothing to say on the matter.

Was it simple incompetence, monumental insensitivity, or did Principal Wiseman do the right thing? You make the call.
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