Smithville Middle School is a relative new school, located on the edge of a small, rapidly growing community in West Central Illinois. Our population is a mix of white, African-American, some Hispanic and a small number of Asian students. The problem is that our enrollment has grown from about 450 last year to nearly 500 this year. This has put a considerable strain on the building, the faculty, and the administration. When I first spoke to our principal, Mr. Davies, about being my site supervisor for this year, he said, “Well, you’ll have a lot to observe right from the beginning. Our first faculty meeting should be interesting.” Mr. Davies is an energetic man in his late forties. He has been a principal for eleven years, and although he is usually pretty cheerful, he was not looking forward to the opening of school this year. We are going to be short on classrooms, and class size will have to go up. The meeting was scheduled for 8:30 on the first morning back after summer vacation. It was held in the library where the faculty gathered for coffee and doughnuts before the meeting started. Mr. Davies usually stands at a podium set up at one end of the room. The teachers sit at tables around the room and tend to laugh and talk a lot until the meeting gets started. They got quiet when Mr. Davies called the meeting to order. He went through the usual announcements and information items we have on the opening day of school, and then we got bad news. He explained the situation in a very matter-of-fact way, outlined some of the steps he saw that the school could take to deal with it, and then invited people to comment. Nobody said much at first, then a few of the older teachers began to complain about how the school board needed to hire more teachers and the superintendent should put a lot more money into the school. Mr. Davies listened, but did not comment. Other teachers started to ask questions about the class schedule and how teachers would have to share space and other questions about BOOKS and the curriculum, especially the science rooms. Mr. Davies explained how some questions were answered in the handouts that teachers had received in their mailboxes that morning. He took notes on other things they asked and said he would attempt to answer as many questions as he could at the next meeting. It took a long time to hear everyone, and by the time the meeting was over, nobody was looking very happy.