Op-Ed Columns

A few weeks ago, the machine that is Hoover High School rolled its caravan into Calhoun County for a little springtime ditty in Oxford. It was heady stuff. This newspaper, embroiled in the euphoria, advanced Hoover’s arrival as if the presidential motorcade was to roll down Quintard.

Mighty Hoover, with Ohatchee favorite son Rush Propst at the helm and a TV show on its resume, is the biggest draw among Alabama high schools. Gigantic reputation in an opulent town of BMWs and shopping malls, wildly popular, impressive facilities, academics considered among the state’s best, athletics to die for, an ego only Texans can understand.

Everyone, it seems, wants to be like Hoover.

Now the bubble’s bursting.

The athletics director has resigned.

Athletic violations are being investigated.

And Hoover’s academic integrity is being questioned.

Wanna be like Hoover now?

Be careful of what you wish.

The hot, humid, lazy, summer days of 2007 have not been kind to Propst’s team; it’s arduous being king. The school’s long-time athletics director, Jerry Browning, has left for another job. (Ho-hum.) The school is being investigated for two minor athletics violations, including allegedly spying on a practice at rival Vestavia Hills. (Ho-hum, again.)

But the whopper is no ho-hum incident at all.

In effect, two Hoover teachers are claiming the machine’s reputation of putting football above all else — ever see its MTV show? — may be true.

A math teacher, Forrest Quattlebaum, says a football player in one of his classes received a B grade of 89, but he was told in June by two Hoover staff members that the grade was a mistake: It had incorrectly been rounded down by a half-point in the school’s computer system. That player should have received an 89.5, they argued. In turn, that grade would round up to an A and not jeopardize the student’s chances to play college football. Quattlebaum, who rechecked his gradebook, disagreed.

The school’s registrar later showed Quattlebaum a letter from a Hoover staff member ordering the grade be changed from an 89.5 to a 90. “Seeing the grade had been changed was a little shocking, a little unnerving,” Quattlebaum told reporters in Birmingham.

Another teacher has told a Hoover assistant superintendent that they felt pressured to give an athlete a B — to keep him eligible for college football — even though he struggled with his coursework and was not likely to earn that grade, despite receiving extra help.

Hoover, Alabama’s high school Garden of Eden, has again returned to the front page. Allegations of changed grades. Finger-pointing between the school’s football factory and academic side. An independent investigation by Sam C. Pointer Jr., a Birmingham attorney and retired federal judge.

Who wants to be like Hoover now?

There are two issues at play here, one trivial, one important. The first is simple: The only reason this has people lathered up is because it’s Hoover. Unless you live there, Hoover isn’t a high school; it’s a brand name plastered on T-shirts, cable TV shows and DVDs. And allegations of academic highjinks at one of America’s most well-known high schools is a sexy tabloid story, an instant headline. It’s the high-school equivalent to Paris Hilton’s jail time; a non-story horribly overplayed.

Think of it this way: If a math teacher at Opp High School alleged grades for a football player had been changed, would it make the newspaper? Of course not. In this case, Hoover’s stardom transcends its news value.

But the critical element is the reminder to educators and parents here in Calhoun County of the importance of retaining our priorities. We’re as guilty as anyone of placing our athletes on pedestals. Don’t go to Oxford or Alexandria or Anniston or anywhere else and claim that the lights of Friday night aren’t a quintessential part of our schools’ essence.

Nevertheless, you’d be naïve to think that none of our schools has ever had teachers feel pressured to change grades. In nearly 20 years in Calhoun County, I’ve heard street talk countless times that implies just that — talk of this coach breaking rules, of this principal looking the other way, of this teacher being told the Big Man on Campus would pass, come hell or high water. And unless someone blows the whistle it’s impossible to substantiate, even harder to prove.

That’s the lesson here.

Remember that our high schools, some flawed, others sound, are only as good as the education they impart. And hope that those who lead Calhoun County’s schools — teachers and coaches, principals and superintendents, the parents who wield influence — have the guts to put academics over everything else, to ensure that our schools’ integrity isn’t called into question. We must not show our children that you get ahead by cheating.

Wanna be like Hoover?

That has a new meaning today.