This principal ditched his office for a portable cart to be available to everyone, anytime

If you have a high schooler headed back to school, you may be wishing you lived in a particular Louisiana school district after reading about their incredible principal. A principal at a Louisiana high school is putting the pedal to the metal for his faculty, staff and students by trading his office for a desk on wheels—a rolling cart to be exact. 

In a Tiktok video, the principal at BASIS Baton Rouge Mattera Charter School, who refers to himself now as “The Principal with a Cart,” says when he was a teacher he really loved how his assistant principal had no office because it increased her availability and visibility to the students, faculty, and staff.

And now in his 15 years as principal, Principal Lamb says his office was used mainly to collect confiscated items and dust. 

“There have been more Rougarou sightings than me in my office,” Lamb says in the video. For those of us not up-to-speed in Louisiana lore, a Rougarou is like the Cajun version of a Boogeyman.

As a mobile principal though, he still needed a place to keep all of his “stuff” like paperwork and his laptop as evidenced in his video where he couldn’t find his laptops and his papers flew all over the hallway.

So what started with his desk in the middle of the school’s hallway, has turned into Lamb’s own rolling cart desk which he says gives him 15,000 steps a day.

Obviously, there are more positives to this idea than the extra fitness. Lamb makes himself available to his students and teachers the entire school day. 

“This is brilliant!” read one comment under the principal’s post. “Not only are you ‘present’, visible, and readily available to students and staff, but you are also changing the culture of your school’s environment that provides an opportunity for building amazing relationships with students and reducing bullying.”

But not everyone thinks it’s a great idea—one comment on his TikTok video pointed out that this solution wouldn’t work for every teacher or admin.

“Something tells me that this would make your staff 10 times more anxious than they already are,” the comment reads. “Teachers are already micromanaged enough. Probably best to just let them do their job without the principal pacing the hallways.”

“This is NOT how you support teachers,” another says. “Walk through the school, pop in to classes for a few minutes to see what’s really going on, have an open door policy that’s communicated to the staff, make them comfortable talking to you and hear/consider what they say. The cart doesn’t serve a purpose; it’s just show.”

As told to TODAY, Lamb says, “Every morning I do rounds. I’m just checking in to see how the teachers are doing and how I can help. Do they need an emergency restroom break? Can I grab some photocopies? The small things can go a long way.”

Lamb believes he is not only providing his administrative services to his faculty, staff, and students, but customer service. And this strategy helps, since his high school, BASIS Baton Rouge Mattera Charter School had a 90% teacher retention from last year to this year, Lamb told TODAY.

His administration loved his idea so much that they plan to have everyone use a rolling cart as a desk for the upcoming school year. 

“Miss Anderson,” who is one of his administrators, shared the idea on Lamb’s Tiktok video, saying her hope is for everyone to follow in Lamb’s footsteps. 

“It’s basically going to be like the Daytona Motor Speedway down the halls at our school,” says Anderson in the video. “My cart is cooler than Mr. Lambs because there’s a beverage holder,” she adds. 

So perhaps they’ll all be accessorizing and customizing their “vehicles” as well. That would be a fun high school experience, right?

Lamb says for real-time updates of how this idea is working out, follow him @principal_lamb on Instagram and TikTok.