Springfield Elementary School

This article is about the fictitious Springfield Elementary School in the television program "The Simpsons." There are also many real Springfield Elementary Schools in the United States.

In the television cartoon The Simpsons, the Springfield Elementary School is the fictional school which Bart Simpson, Lisa Simpson and their fellow students attend.

Its principal is Seymour Skinner, and its superintendent is Superintendent Chalmers (with his assistant Leopold). The school's teachers include Miss Elizabeth Hoover, Dewey Largo, and Edna Krabappel. The other staff include Otto Mann, Groundskeeper Willy, and Lunchlady Doris. Children at the school include Nelson Muntz, Jimbo Jones, Kearney, Wendell and Üter.

Administration

Seymour Skinner (voiced by Harry Shearer) is the prototypical educational bureaucrat, constantly concerned with a low-grade battle against the school's inadequate resources, largely apathetic teachers, and largely rowdy and unenthusiastic students--Bart being the standout example. Principal Skinner's name is a joking reference to the famous psychologist B. F. Skinner, famous for his theories that with appropriate reward and punishment conditioning techniques, any behaviour could be introduced into an individual.

Seymour Skinner's personal history, like that of many Simpsons characters, is somewhat convoluted. It was long known that he was a Vietnam War veteran, single, living alone with his domineering elderly mother. However, in an episode devoted to filling in the character's backstory, it was revealed that he was actually an impostor, having stolen the identity of his platoon sergeant at the end of the war. Seymour's real name is Armin Tamzarian. However, at the end of the episode, a judge granted Tamzarian Skinner's name, past, present, future, and mother, and decreed that no one should mention his real identity again under penalty of torture.

Superintendent Chalmers (voiced by Hank Azaria) is the stereotypical local superintendent of Springfield's school district. Whenever he visits the school, some sort of disaster strikes. He produces extreme cases of anxiety in Principal Skinner, who offers increasingly improbable stories to explain what's happening. Skinner often tries to exploit Lisa's genius to make the school look good.

Leopold (voiced by Dan Castellaneta) was Superintendent Chalmers' assistant. He was a surly, snarling one-trick pony; when a staff member had to be temporarily replaced, Leopold stomped in, issued vague threats and terrified the children, making them think he was the replacement, and then suddenly and politely introduced the actual substitute. The children then collectively sighed with relief.

Teachers

Edna Krabappel (voiced by Marcia Wallace) is the typical downtrodden schoolteacher who has had any idealism that she ever had beaten out of her by the sad realities of the poor resources and misbehaving children. She is also rather poorly educated, a caricature of American public school teachers, as evidenced by the episode when Lisa steals all the teacher's manuals.

Edna teaches Bart Simpson, Milhouse van Houten, and Martin Prince, amongst others.

Edna is separated from her husband, misses male company, and it is occasionally implied that she feels her biological clock ticking. In some early episodes she is portrayed as very sexually aggressive. In later episodes, though, she develops a secret, but seemingly stable, romantic relationship with Seymour Skinner, the school's principal. This is one of the exceedingly few cases where Simpsons characters have apparently undergone personal evolution within the show's history.

Her last name is pronounced "kra-boppel", rather than like the fruit. Matt Groening admitted in a commentary on the DVD of the first season, it was meant to be a joke that no one called her "crabapple", ever, and indeed no one did until once in the 2003/04 season.

Miss Elizabeth Hoover (voiced by Maggie Roswell) has been worn down by her years in the public school system, and is not against drinking significant quantities of alcohol. She is in particular weary of dealing with Lisa's unbridled enthusiasm and Ralph's mishaps and inanities.

Dewey Largo is the music teacher.

Staff

Otto Mann (voiced by Harry Shearer) is the school bus driver. He is notable for his occasionally manic driving style and his propensity for sounding and acting like a perpetual '70s teenager.

"My name is Otto, and I love to get blotto!"

His father is an Admiral, and the two don't get along. There have been suggestions that this is a reference to Jim Morrison of The Doors, whose father was also an Admiral.

Groundskeeper Willie (voiced by Dan Castellaneta) is the school's groundskeeper, with flaming red hair and a thick Scottish accent. His years of heavy work have given him an amazingly muscled physique, occasionally revealed, notably when he had to crawl through ventilation shafts to retrieve Santa's Little Helper. Needing some assistance to get through the narrow tunnels, he turns to Lunchlady Doris to coat him with oil, with the memorable line "Grease me up, woman!".

At one time, Willie was engaged to Sherry Bobbins, until she recovered her eyesight at which point, in Willie's words, "suddenly the ugliest man in Glasgow wasn't good enough for [her] anymore."

Willie's hobbies include video-taping couples in cars, something which proves to the benefit of Homer Simpson when he is later wrongfully accused of sexual harassment. Compare: Hagrid from Harry Potter

In another episode, albeit a Halloween episode, and is, as such, non-canonical, Willie is revealed to be an apparition, his actual body having been destroyed. The tragedy occurred at a wintertime parents' meeting, when Homer turned up the thermostat to maximum heat, in purposeful spite of a note left by Willie. The suddenly raging furnace ignited Willie's clothes. Seeing this, the groundskeeper ran up to the room where the meeting was being held. Principal Skinner refused to let the burning man speak out of turn, resulting in his death.

Some time after this, Willie fulfills a promise made upon his death to invade the schoolchildren's dreams and kill them there. He successfully puts an end to Martin, but is foiled by the three Simpson children working in unison.

According to Superintendent Chalmers, Willie is an escaped patient from a mental hospital that Skinner hired.

It was recently revealed that Willie's personal enemy is another Groundskeeper that speaks witha a heavy Irish accent: Shamus.

Lunchlady Doris (voiced by Doris Grau) is the overweight, middle-aged, and laconic worker at the canteen. It is occasionally intimated that she and Groundskeeper Willy are romantically involved. She has served many weird things to the students, including whole beef hearts, horse testicles, rat's milk, ground newspapers, and ground-up gym mats ("There's very little meat in these gym mats.") After Doris Grau died, the character of Lunchlady Doris was retired out of respect.

Children

There are four bullies at the Springfield school. Nelson Muntz (voiced by Nancy Cartwright) takes delight in inflicting pain to the others in school, but is not usually cruel. He is notorious for his unabashed displays of schadenfreude, invariably accompanied by his trademark "Ha ha!" laugh. Kearney is a pudgy kid with a disarming habit of punching his fist into his other hand. Although he appears to be of similar age to Bart, he can drive and has a young son (who sleeps in a drawer). Jimbo Jones (voiced by Pamela Hayden) wears a toque and a black T-shirt with a skull on it. He enjoys torturing his schoolmates and shoplifting. In one episode, Jimbo becomes the boyfriend of Bart's babysitter Laura Powers (voiced by Sara Gilbert), whom Bart had a crush on. Dolph (voiced by Tress MacNeille) is the fourth bully.

Wendell is a pale kid who barfs easily. Üter is the German foreign exchange student, with odd habits such as offering his already-licked lollipops to others as a sign of friendship, and eating marzipan candies fortified with iodine. He disappeared after the Civil War field trip, when the people running the reenactment they visited noticed that the students had snuck in and gave chase. Üter was left behind to be clubbed with the butts of the faux rifles that the men reenacting the Civil War were wielding.

Also at the school are Ralph Wiggum of the Wiggum family, Sherrie and Terrie, and Millhouse of the van Houten family.