Hostile Takeover Leaves Grace “a twitter”
Media created by Louise Giddings ’23
Disclaimer: The following article is a completely satirical take on Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover.
As we all know, about two months ago Elon Musk signed a deal to purchase the Grace Church High School, and started the hostile takeover about a month ago. While the Musk takeover started comically, it quickly evolved into a grave challenge for our school.
Ever since, the school has gone through massive changes, and not for the better.
The first image of Elon Musk taking over was him walking into the high school carrying a sink, but things got less comical very quickly. Mr.Musk began his takeover of the high school by laying off half of the faculty and staff. We all saw the impact: our class sizes immediately doubled and many classrooms could not fit that many kids (about 30-32 per class).
The teachers workload also doubled because of the added students to their classes. However, the impact didn’t just fall on teachers but on everyone else who works at the school and keeps it running. Kitchen staffers had to cook twice as much, maintenance had to work twice as hard, and every other facet of the school has shifted into overdrive. The school felt the effects of the layoffs immediately; the facilities became harder to clean up and everyone was overwhelmed with work.
The next event was the introduction of teacher verification on Gracenet, so that teachers appear with a blue G next to their name. But there was a twist. Anyone –student, teacher or parent — can buy a verification and pretend to be their teachers. Classes immediately fell into chaos, with no one knowing what was actually due or what test to study for. Eventually, after enough chaos had been caused for Musk and after he was impersonated on Gracenet, Musk disabled verification purchases.
Beyond that, many expelled students have been allowed to return to Grace and many more will opt to return. The re-entry of people who have been expelled for various reasons has led to even more carnage in a school already prone to controversy.
After a tumultuous and stressful upheaval, Musk came to the school’s remaining staff and faculty with another ultimatum to either become part of a hardcore school and work with a “maniacal sense of urgency” or leave the school permanently with a short severance.
Musk may have expected the school to come together and join his hardcore goals but that isn’t what happened. Realizing the graveness of the situation and the insane working conditions they were asked to agree to, even more of the faculty resigned. The school fell into a mess without enough people on the maintenance team. There wasn’t enough lunch for even one grade of students because the kitchen team was short staffed. Classrooms were filled with noise and too many students so no one was able to learn.
We have fallen into despair and may not make it to June, as many students have begun betting on the downfall of Grace. No classes have progressed for a month, and we are falling behind our curriculum. Students are concerned about their futures and whether colleges will accept them coming from a school like this.
Under Mr. Musk’s leadership, the Grace we know, has gone from a well-oiled machine to a rusty pile of broken gears. What’s next?