This was probably in the top ten worst high schools in the country. It was the worst high school in my state, which I attended a semester after attending the best public high school in my state, so I really got to see the wide gamut of education available in my state. And my state floats between the 1st-3rd worst ranked in the US for education, so it was truly a bottom-of-the-barrel experience.

Each time you'd walk into class, it was a dice roll if another piece of equipment had been stolen. We stopped buying and using projectors because any new ones got stolen within days. Sometimes I'd walk into class and every single piece of furniture had been completely turned upside down. Students would play on their phones, yell, throw things at the teachers, and the teachers would just ignore them.

It was also an extremely racially charged situation which had a big impact. I think there were less than ten white people in the school, the rest of the school was black, and a handful of hispanic folk.

The white people were almost all racist, and so apart from my neighbor, I only hung around black people. As the only white person there who hung out with non-white people, my nickname across the entire high school somehow became Tarzan, in part due to my long hair. When I'd walk down the halls each day, people would beat their chests and make ape noises and give me dap.

I'll never forget being at an award ceremony and walking up for a few awards, each time the entire student body would start stomping in the bleachers and making jungle noises and shouting my nickname. The visibly perplexed administration had no idea what was going on.

Because my credits would not cleanly transfer to their curriculum, I had two free periods each day and used this time to help out the administration and teaching staff, running errands, organizing, doing paperwork, etc. This allowed me to interface often with the school board, who was... entirely comprised of white, racist, old men. Men who fundamentally refused to understand the predicament facing the student body, and who were too eager to escalate instead of finding a way to bridge communication between the student body and faculty. Instead of empowering students, they saw them all as future bodies for the prison and service industry, and it was obvious. Students learned nothing, but would get straight A's. They would of course absolutely fail state and national standardized tests. They were shoved through the meat grinder with nothing to show for it.

Wow, I realized all the horrific stories came from a single person. You had a truly sad childhood. I am sorry, hopefully things are better now. However maybe you can be the change you want to see. Maybe you want to become a police man?