Our current principal Ms. Cheryl Clark (who has only been principal at our school for 2 school days) has already made our 2022-2023 school year a living hell. The students at William Allen thought that she would be an amazing addition to our school but soon found out that having her as our principal was a big mistake. Ms. Clark had an opportunity to make a good impression on the students but failed drastically, as she has showed nothing but blatant disrespect towards the students there. Today (August 30th) we had a 11th grade assembly to discuss expectations and the materials needed to move on to the next grade, The students were calm and collected until Clark walked up on stage and used her hostile words to rudely lecture the Juniors about enforcing uniform rules, phone rules, No beverages, and all bathrooms being locked. The students didn’t like that and expressed their feelings and Ms. Clark decided to yell and scream at them instead of nicely explaining why she was doing it. She proceeded to say “ I don’t mind having to get rid of a couple students, I’ll still have 3,000 more to take care of” which shows that instead of taming the kids, she would rather punish them. After that she said “this whole grade level will have detention tomorrow, you will be held accountable for your actions” when they only expressed they’re feelings. This morning I walked into the school building around 8:05 am only to be rudely greeted by Ms. Cheryl Clark herself. She yelled at the students about having AirPods in their ears while making their way to their first and second periods. She also screamed about using our phone as a way to see our schedule,  I believe this woman doesn’t know how to control her anger or speak to people. We feel strongly that she is abusing her power and shouldn’t have a job where she has control over students. This is not her first complaint as she likes to get jobs at schools and make a horrible first impression of herself by enforcing rules on the students, expecting them to all listen right away. She doesn’t understand how to speak to children one bit. If she would have came to us nicely, there would be no problem. It’s almost like she doesn’t know what “nice” is. We aren’t allowed to have headphones or our phone while walking in the halls at William Allen High School, I am confused as to what the difference is. The school is beginning to feel more like a detention center than a school. She treats the girls differently from the boys here, many students have been saying that she is sexist. Not all students at this school are vulgar animals like people make us out to be, we deserve to have a good school experience with a principal that has rules that are reasonable. However we do not deserve to feel like we are voluntarily showing up to jail every morning. Nobody should be greeted with a screaming principal that early. The uniform policy is understandable but not being able to use the bathroom, have beverages, or use phones during free time or class switches? We understand that Allen has a bad reputation but if this was any other school you guys would fight tooth and nail to help the students. However I would like to apologize for anything that this petition might have started, I felt like I needed to do something that was different then other kids. I didn’t wanna show out or start fights at school over this. I did not feel like the principal would be willing to have this conversation so I chose a different route. I’ve added a link to what another school that Ms. Clark worked at in 2016 had to say about these same issues. http://franklinreporter.com/franklin-high-school-principal-cheryl-clark-abruptly-resigns/