Importance of Blackwell Elementary School

Blackwell Elementary employs Alice Goodwin as a nurse five mornings a week from September to June. She has an open cubicle beside the principal's and secretary's offices, where she deals with chronic stomachaches and forgotten Ritalin. Blackwell is an enormous K-8 school with nearly 700 students. Noting that Alice's office is occasionally a bottleneck, Principal David Henskin calls a school board meeting to consider using volunteers to dispense over-the-counter medications. Police officers, who have been investigating charges of abuse against Alice, attend the meeting, where she is nervous and upset. They confront her in the hallway outside the restroom, where she blurts what they take to be an admission of guilt and shortly afterwards she is arrested. At the trial, Henskin admits that in the atmosphere of witch hunting, all teachers fear that they are at risk of false accusations.