The Lord Of Discipline

By David Hill

Ruben Perez will forever divide his life into two periods: before Dec. 1, 1994, and after. Prior to that date, Perez was a little-known assistant principal at Denver's Horace Mann Middle School, which sits in a quiet residential neighborhood just northwest of the city's booming downtown. During his two and a half years at the school, the 41-year-old New Mexico native had taken his job as chief disciplinarian seriously. He had started a "Crimestoppers Fund'' to reward students who snitched on troublemakers. He was known to suspend students who were caught fighting or talking back to their teachers. And if he didn't always see eye to eye with Horace Mann's principal, Martha Guevara, Perez felt he had strong support from the school's 50 teachers when it came to matters of discipline, and he was proud of his track record. "Things have changed since I stepped into this building,'' he told me.

Still, Perez wasn't satisfied. He believed there were too many disruptive students who were keeping Horace Mann from reaching its potential. "I went around to the teachers,'' Perez said, "and I said, 'Give me the names of the worst of your worst. Give me the names of the kids who have excessive truancies, excessive tardies, excessive absences, in addition to the kids who just come to socialize.' '' The teachers were more than happy to oblige; eventually, they came up with a list of 97 students.

What Perez had in mind was a mass suspension, a dramatic gesture that he hoped would send a strong message to all of the school's 785 students. But there was one problem. "I knew that Martha would not go along with it,'' he said, "because she doesn't like suspending kids. Her philosophy of discipline is totally different from mine.'' So Perez waited for the right moment to...