Russ Karsten's head is on the chopping block.

OK, he's not literally being decapitated. That's an expression. It means he's about to be fired.

There should be no need to state the obvious. Most people understand nuances, idioms and that tricky stuff called context. But the school system is at issue, so it's best to denude this essay of all ambiguity.

Karsten is a 33-year-old teacher at Mesa Elementary in Boulder. Early this month, he left an unsigned, cut-and-paste note in the school mailbox of Priscilla Kohn, a literacy teacher. The note said, "The flood failed. You must die!"

The term "flood" refers to a literacy teaching strategy in which students are flooded with reading material. On May 3, Mesa had just recently received disappointing scores from the Colorado Student Assessment Program third-grade reading test.

Kohn called the cops, who treated the note as a potential threat. When Karsten learned that the note was taken seriously, he admitted that he was the author. He said it was supposed to be a joke. About 200 parents have rallied to Karsten's defense, noting, among other things, that Kohn and Karsten enjoyed a jovial, joking relationship.

On Tuesday, the Boulder Valley School District superintendent recommended that Karsten be fired. This invoked a formal procedure that could end in Karsten's termination. It's impossible to speak definitively about the Karsten case, because he, Kohn and the district have been mum, and some relevant facts might be hidden from public view.

But what is known does prompt questions about the schools' ability to discern crude humor from credible threats. If Karsten's aim were to alarm or threaten Kohn anonymously, would he have used the school mailbox and clubby, educational jargon? Doesn't the reported context of their friendship matter? Can the word "die" ever be used in a joke?

One would think so, but some schools have become hypersensitive about violence. In Longmont last month, a 16-year-old boy was playing with a three-inch pocket knife as he cut across school grounds on the way to his girlfriend's house. The police said the boy didn't threaten anyone, but the school was locked down anyway. Recently, two boys in Centennial lost recess privileges for using their fingers as imaginary weapons on the playground.

Perhaps the move to fire Karsten is another over-reaction, long on good intentions but short on critical thinking. Meantime, the district's move has effectively diverted attention from the issue behind the joke.

This year, 78 percent of third-grade Mesa students scored as being "proficient or above" in reading. Last year, 84 percent scored that well. The year before, it was 94 percent.

Of the 35 Boulder Valley schools reporting results from the third-grade reading test, only three suffered a more precipitous drop in scores from last year to this year. Meanwhile, the district's average third-grade reading score actually rose.

Here's a modest proposal. If imbecilic jokes are firing offenses, perhaps falling test scores should be, too.

Reach Clint Talbott at (303) 473-1367 or talbottc@thedailycamera.com.

May 30, 2002

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