STUDENT DEFENDS FIDLER'S RECORD

I was shocked and appalled by the Cape Girardeau Board of Education's decision not to renew Randie Fidler's contract as principal of Central High School.

My first encounter with Mr. Fidler did not begin as a pleasant one. It was a confrontation concerning the high school's finals policy. Although I was not pleased with the outcome, I gained respect for Mr. Fidler. He enforced the policy not because he agreed with it, but because it was the policy. And he made me obey the rules just like everyone else. The following summer, he took our suggestions and the concerns of students, teachers, parents and members of the community and developed a finals policy that would better serve the needs of everyone involved. Why did he do this? Not because he had to, and definitely not because he was forced to. He did it because he wanted to help us. This is the kind of passion we have in charge of our school.

This is certainly not the only improvement made to Central High School over the past five years Mr. Fidler has been principal. I will do my best to describe some of the changes that have been made.

Have you visited our high school lately? To develop an accurate opinion of the influence Mr. Fidler has had on our school, you need to visit. I was taught an opinion worth voicing is an opinion well-researched. Before you bad-mouth Mr. Fidler, come into Tiger Country and see our improvements.

Mr. Fidler supports student involvement. Over the past five years, student involvement has increased dramatically. When a club, organization, sports team or even a group of Tiger fans wins a trophy or a game, puts on a play, enters an art exhibit or even shows up to support a team, Mr. Fidler purchases doughnuts for them at the last five minutes of first hour recognizes the group of students.

He also encourages students to achieve success by awarding the school with five extra minutes for lunch when a sports team wins a big game or the Scholar Bowl team wins a tournament.

Also, Mr. Fidler has encouraged school support by allowing us to have tailgate parties in the school parking lot before school events, and he has even attended them and has purchased pizza, hot dogs and soda for the parties.

He has also allowed our student government to host a club fair. This even allowed all the school organizations to get the word out to students who otherwise would not know anything about clubs, and he encouraged them to join.

Mr. Fidler supports the students. He personally attends every school event possible, because he knows each event is important to those students. Mr. Fidler is like a parent to 1,000 kids. He has attended music concerts, competitions, art shows and much more on his own time. He meets with every new student individually, listens to every complaint of students and does his very best to fix every problem. Mr. Fidler also has a tremendous amount of respect for students' opinions. Whenever a big decision is to be made that will directly affect the students, he meets with the Student Senate and asks for the opinions, concerns and suggestions of the students. Why? Because he cares.

Mr. Fidler supports academics. Instead of just setting the curriculum of departments himself, he involves the teachers so they can have input. Missouri School Improvement evaluations show that six years ago we had 33 marks of concerns throughout the district. Now we only have 11 marks of concern. And the evaluations of Central High School show our attendance has gone up, our drop-out rate is down, our standardized test scores are up and the amount of discipline referrals is down.

Why are we letting a man of such integrity, pride and passion go? We should be begging this man to stay. The country is campaigning for education reform and improvement. It has been taking place at Central High School for the past five years under the direction of Mr. Fidler. Let's continue to "renew the vision and maintain the mission" by renewing Mr. Fidler's contract.

Patricia Bennett is the student-body president at Central High School in Cape Girardeau.