Author: Jerry Leger

When the money stops coming in, a certain kind of silence descends upon a public institution. It is evident in the language used by administrators, which is cautious and almost apologetic, as well as in the way people speak when they are aware that their next sentence will be poorly received. It’s becoming more difficult to ignore the tone that currently permeates the California State University system. The biggest public four-year university network in the country, Cal State, claims to be $2.3 billion short. This week’s bimonthly Board of Trustees meeting produced the number, which is not an isolated incident.…

You shouldn’t expect anything horrible to happen on the Mayfield High School track. It’s a typical suburban sports complex, the kind of place where parents watch their children compete on Saturdays while leaning against fences and sipping cold coffee. However, an Eastlake North High School pole vaulter went up into the air, came down, and didn’t get up the way he was supposed to at some point during a recent meet. That fleeting moment, which was probably nearly invisible to those who weren’t paying close attention, has now grown into something much more. The student was taken to Cleveland Clinic…

The signs, which were hand-painted in the kind of neat lettering that suggests a parent who once worked in graphic design, were first placed on the lawns of a lush neighborhood outside of Cleveland. “Save Our Schools.” “Vote No on Cuts.” “Where Did the Money Go?” Cul-de-sacs from suburban New Jersey to the outer rings of Denver, Minneapolis, and Atlanta began to exhibit similar signs by spring. Though it’s still unclear if this is a movement or just the same old PTA energy with a sharper edge, there’s a feeling that something has changed. For many years, urban districts—such as…

Before the coffee shops on Henry Street have even opened their doors, a line forms outside the school office on a soggy Tuesday morning in Brooklyn Heights. Silently, parents in puffer jackets wait, some clutching printed-out emails, others holding toddlers. Everyone seems to be thinking the same thing, and nobody wants to be the first to ask it. Will my child be able to enter? By now, the numbers sound almost theatrical. One Brooklyn public elementary school has about 1,200 families waiting on a list; this number has increased so rapidly that even seasoned parent coordinators characterize it as unfamiliar…

The parking lots of some Arizona school district offices have an odd silence. The buildings themselves are unremarkable, with low rooflines, beige stucco, and flagpoles that have been slightly bent by the desert wind. However, the individuals in charge of them are earning salaries that are comparable to those of a mid-sized tech company. When you pass one of these buildings, it’s easy to assume that the woman locking up at six is going home to a sensible sedan and a teacher’s pension. The truth is frequently more akin to a private retirement fund that no one was supposed to…

At least in our home, it began with dinosaurs and poop. Almost in passing over a bowl of cereal, my third-grader told me that he and his classmates had figured out how to use Gemini on their school-issued Chromebooks to create absurd pictures, usually by combining the two. He was aware that it wasn’t permitted in theory. He was also aware that no one was stopping them. The tool was sitting between a typing game and a math worksheet, unblocked. It’s a minor issue. Additionally, it’s precisely the kind of little thing that has transformed regular suburban school board meetings…

Moving in are the new freshmen. From Cambridge to Chapel Hill, you can see them dragging milk crates and bedding past the same old gates on quads. However, the numbers also indicate that something has changed if you look at the faces. Just 5% of the Class of 2029 identify as Black or African American, according to a report published earlier this month in Princeton’s student newspaper. That is a significant decline. To find a figure that low, you have to go back to 1968. The silence surrounding the figure seems louder than the figure itself, especially for a school…

The lack of grades isn’t the first thing you see when you enter one of these schools. The bulletin boards are the cause. Where you would typically expect a list of honor roll names, there are lengthy, narrative-style write-ups about students—paragraphs, not numbers—pinned. An evaluation for a senior is more akin to a recommendation letter than a report card. Almost instantly, it seems like something is being done differently here, and those who are doing it don’t care if the rest of the nation agrees. A tiny but increasing number of American high schools have been discreetly ceasing to assign…

When an injured athlete is instructed to remain motionless for ten weeks, a certain silence descends upon a college residence hall. Nassim Bickham was well aware of it. She fractured two vertebrae in her spine after landing on her head during a bar dismount that she had performed thousands of times as a freshman gymnast at Berkeley. Her body would recover. Since then, she has claimed that her thoughts took a lot longer, but no one seemed to notice. Universities and high schools have finally begun to take seriously the gap between the visible injury and the invisible one. It’s…

More and more small towns and suburbs around the nation are witnessing this Friday-afternoon scene: a line of girls wearing mouthguards and pulled-back hair stretching their hamstrings before practice, a strip of artificial turf behind a high school, and the late sun slanting low. Not a single helmet. Do not wear shoulder pads. Only cleats, hip-clipped flags, and a coach somewhere yelling about route trees. It’s a subtle revolution that’s easy to overlook if you’re not looking for it. It’s obvious that the NFL is searching. In order to expand the flag version of the sport, the league committed $32…