What is the State of School?

   What is the "State of  School" these days?  Who better to tell you than the itinerant substitute teacher, traveling between scores of schools withing a 30 mile radius of my home in the Sierra foothills.  
   Like several of my siblings (Rockwell Sisters) I am a teacher, a fully credentialed teacher authorized to teach k-12.  I am also a math teacher.  Being a math teacher used to be next to godliness in the academic scheme of things.  These days it doesn't count for much.  When there are 40 applicants for one (math) position, it seems that the more valuable trait would be lots of armor and an insensitivity to loud noise and vulgar language.
   Today, for example, I am subbing at a high school in a multi ethnic region of north Sacramento.  During my third period class, several of the students in the overcrowded classroom started spreading a rumor that they had a gun... I knew they were trying to just get a rise out of the sub...  and ignored them for a while.  Then I thought, as they continued the claim, that it was my job to report this to the proper authorities.  So I looked in my sub folder and saw no phone number for the office, in fact I saw no phone list any where.  (As I am writing this I hear the "f---" word pronounced every 30 seconds or so at various locations within the classroom).   There was an older gentleman who came into the class, an aide, and I asked him where the phone list was, he didn't know either.  I found the school phone number on the Internet and tried to call but the phone said the call could not be completed.  Finally the aide showed me where the "call" button in the classroom was and I hit it.  I asked for security to be sent down...  Five or ten minutes later, someone finally did come to the classroom and I told him about the rumor.  Another man showed up and then the two of them told the kids to put their back packs on the desks to be searched. 
   As I said, I knew the students were just blowing smoke, but I would have been remiss in my job if I did not report it.  If there had been a real situation, all of that lost time trying to contact an authority would have been critical. 
   I have come to the conclusion, after my last "long term sub" job  that I do not want a permanent position in a school under these "under siege" conditions.