PLUMB STUPID: The hall-pass plungers were yanked after kids began wreaking havoc with them.
Turns out it was a crappy idea.
The principal of a Hell’s Kitchen HS that used to be among the most violent in the city had students using wooden toilet plungers as hall passes this school year.
The half-baked scheme by the second-year principal at the HS of Graphic Communication Arts that placed 2-foot-long plungers in every classroom last month immediately plunged the school into chaos, a source said.
“The kids were using the plungers to whack each other, to pop ceiling tiles in the bathroom,” the source said. “They were sticking it in the toilet and then flinging them across the classroom.”
The school had painted every plunger a different color and wrote the room number on each plastic cup.
Staffers raised their eyebrows when they learned that their old laminated hall passes were being replaced with a plumber’s tool — but they weren’t given an explanation for the swap, according to the source.
The unsanitary insanity continued for several weeks until the city Department of Education caught wind of it from school security officers and pooh-poohed the plan.
The school was ordered to collect the plungers late last month.
“This is clearly not condoned by DOE, and we put a stop to it,” said Department of Education spokeswoman Margie Feinberg. “We are investigating and considering next steps.”
Principal Brendan Lyons did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.
Students said they wished he had spent less time worrying about the hall passes and more time worrying about their class schedules, which they said have been changed several times since the start of the school year.
Hundreds of kids spent the first week or two of school in the auditorium with nothing to do while administrators sorted out their schedules, students said.
Several students said they were asked as recently as last week about their supposedly poor attendance in classes they didn’t even know they had been registered for.
The HS of Graphic Communication Arts was given an “F” grade in 2011, and was initially slated to be overhauled this summer with roughly half its staff members replaced. It would have been closed and reopened last month with a new name.
But the teachers union won a lawsuit prohibiting the city from making the changes at the school and at nearly two dozen others.
In August, the school was named to the state’s list of lowest-performing schools, meaning it’s still likely to undergo closure or overhauls in the next three years.