Hmmm… Where to start. I feel as if so much has happened in the past few days that my head is spinning.

Even though my heart was breaking, I went to graduation as did every other teacher in my district. It’s what we do – we are there for our kids – they are a part of our lives. However, the chairman of the school board opted out. Graduation started at 7:00, and at 5:00 he called the principal to say he (and the rest of the board) wouldn’t be coming.

The Rational?

They heard everyone was angry with them. They didn’t want to be boo’d and they heard the kids were going to refuse to shake their hands when they handed out diplomas. So, instead of the school board recognizing the kids that night, the principal and one of the teachers handled graduation. Parents were less than impressed with the actions of the board, especially when they found out the board chair was across the street having dinner at a local restaurant during the ceremony.

The next day was our last day of classes with students. The kids were amazing in their support of their teachers. My desk was buried under cards and things from my kids. Previous graduates were in and out of the building all day to say “g’bye” to those of us who wouldn’t be back. Television and newspaper reporters were all over the place. The story had gone wild. This was the third day straight that my baby school was one of the lead stories in the area.

The student walk-out was well done. They had a bbq and held signs that said things like “what about us”, “don’t destroy our family”, and things like that. A number of them were interviewed by television stations and they did a beautiful job. Every bit of press coverage was excellent. Parents showed up to support their kids when they walked out. I cried at the support we were being given.

The board meeting to cut us was scheduled for 6:00 that evening and everyone was going to attend. At the end of the day, we heard they were planning to meet at 5:00 to “discuss” things first. Within minutes of hearing that, the text messages and facebook pages were updated to let everyone know what was happening. Parents and students arrived early – just in case.

Our students packed the floor of the gym and reserved the seats in front of them for their teachers. They wanted us to all do this together. As it turned out, almost more people showed up for this than for graduation. They came at 5:00 and waited until 6:00 – they had things to say. Again, reporters and cameras were everywhere to cover this.

The meeting started at 6:00 with the board reading a statement explaining what was happening. The crowd was not impressed. Our principal spoke as well. He supported the teachers completely and said the board did this without his input, after he left a meeting, and that he was not in favor of the cuts. The crowds cheered. One lone board member said the same thing. In fact, he pointed out that they didn’t even let him know they were planning on cuts – he was out of the loop completely and he was angry. He also felt the cuts were insane and impossible. The crowd cheered.

After that parents, students, teachers, and community members lined up to address the school board. One after another stated they didn’t want this to happen. At times it became a little heated. I was impressed by the quality of the arguments being put forth. Parents did their homework and had facts and figures given to them by the state to support their cause. The board squirmed and tried to squiggle out of some things. The meeting went on for hours!

During the meeting the board chair actually began texting while one of the kids was asking a question. At that point, parents shouted “listen to our children and put your phone away!” At first he refused, but when more and more started shouting, he put the IPhone away. Later, three of the board members leaned back and began talking among themselves. The crowd shouted to stop that because it violated the open meeting laws. The board responded by saying they were considering tabling the cuts.

Eventually, the board challenged the parents to pass a referendum that we need to survive. They told the parents and teachers that they’d stop this IF everyone – community, employees, and board all worked together to find ways to make our school solvent. The crowd cheered. The only voice that argued was that of our superintended. He wasn’t at the meeting, but he was called. When the board told him hundreds and hundreds of community members were demanding they stop this, he said “too bad, make the cuts”.

They opted not to make the cuts and the celebrations began.

Kids and parents were hugging us. Tears were flowing. Parents that I’ve never seen in the school came up to tell us how important we were to their kids. Each of us had our own compliments, and I’m going to post the two that touched me the most. A hubby/wife duo came up and hugged me and said “without you, there is no school here” and another mom said “you have no idea how much this community loves you”. Touched doesn’t even begin to cover the emotions that statements like that stir up.

The kids were ecstatic. They learned first hand that citizens can make a difference if they work together. A number of them said things like “wow, power to the people!”

And then…..

Yesterday – our last day of work. No students were there, it was just us – the staff. For many of the teachers, they won’t be back until August so they would have had no idea what our board and superintendent were planning.

After everyone was gone, the superintendent and a couple of board members met. They posted a new meeting. Legally, every time they meet they must post it ahead of time. Their posting was put up inside the school, facing the empty hallways after everyone left for the summer. It was legal, but was it ethical?

What they didn’t know was that across the hall was one last teacher. He was sitting in the dark, entering grades on his computer. He heard them. He waited until they were gone and he took a picture of that posting.

Before long, the text messages began to fly. Reporters found out. Our superintendent finally spoke to the press and said “we still need to make cuts”.

In spite of everyone’s offer to work together, this man – who doesn’t even officially start as our superintendent until tomorrow – is going to ignore them. He’s going to forge ahead and we think only one board member will try to stop him.

Emotionally, this has been a disaster. It’s up, it’s down, it’s all over the place. Right now, I don’t know if I will have a job or not. I have no idea what is going to happen.

I do know this.

Our new superintendent is going to start his career at a school with no support from any staff. The community despises him. The kids want to toss him off the nearest bridge. Several of the board members are going to be leaving the board so he will lose that support. I don’t think it’s going to be a pleasant job for him, and that’s okay. He negotiated an enormous salary and benefits package for himself. He can spend his time counting his money because he certainly won’t have any friends to count.

Peace

Do any of you have those people in your world that simply “bug” you and you cannot exactly say why? My mind is on one of them as I write. For some reason this person just irritates the beejeebers out of me.  

She’s a hypocrite. She espouses certain values and beliefs, yet the rules she applies to “other” people don’t seem to apply to her.  I suppose we all do that to some degree, but she takes it past the point that I can stomach. She has an uncanny habit of finding pleasure in picking on other people. I know, I know – it probably makes her feel better. I understand the psychology of a bully. That said, she truly doesn’t seem to understand that people around her are not playtoys that she can manipulate for her own sick amusement. She loves to find their weak spots and go for the jugular – all in the name of fun.

Supposedly, one of her pet peeves is liars – but she’s not an honest person. She has no problem pointing fingers and putting down other people who have broken the rules and told lies. I’m not defending their actions. What does bother me is her supposed moral high ground on this issue. She’s done some terribly dishonest things; apparently those actions don’t count.

So there ya’ have it – my quickie like vent of the day. Whatcha think? Should I smack her one? Ha!

Peace

Years ago my state initiated something called “open enrollment” in our public school system. Families and kids can choose which district they would like their kids to attend. If they opt out of their home district, they can request another district allow their kids to go there. The home district must approve the transfer, the new non-home district can choose whether or not to accept the kid. Once a kid is enrolled in the new district, they cannot force them to leave if they are failing or being a twit. On the other hand, the home district has to allow them to come back at any time.

Over the years, various bugs have been worked out of the system. For instance, the state doesn’t want kids hopping from one district to another for sports. They addressed that with very rigid eligibility rules that seem to be working quite well. Even so there are still some problems. One of them is funding. Parents continue to pay school taxes in their home district while their kids attend class in a different district. Those parents have nothing vested in the home district and tend to vote down additional funding the home district may need. It can be frustrating.

All of those problems seem inconsequential when I sit back and look at what Bush’s “NCLB” (No Child Left Behind) program is doing to a number of kids. I understand that he was hoping to fix problems in education. I know there were some problems. I know some kids were struggling. However, I’m seeing more kids being left behind in a rather ugly game that’s happening.

Kids are tested, retested, and tested again. The plan is all kids – even special learners – will be at high performing levels by 2014. Everywhere the pressure is on for districts to make sure as many kids as possible do well on these tests. To meet this goal, some things are being left out of curriculums altogether so teachers can focus on teaching to the test. Perhaps one can argue those things are not “necessary”, but I argue that higher level thinking requires more than the rote memory type things that is needed on these tests.

Within each district students are divided into all kinds of categories – males, females, Native American males and females, African American males and females, free and reduced lunch eligibility kids, special education kids, etc. etc. etc. If any of those groups doesn’t make the grade, the school has failed to meet AYP (annual yearly progress). If too many kids are absent and don’t take the tests, the school fails to meet AYP. Currently, my school is failing to meet AYP. Both our elementary and secondary schools as a whole flew through the testing, yet we needed one more special education student to pass the tests in order to meet – it didn’t happened.

While each year, the bar for passing the tests gets higher more and more school districts fail to meet AYP. Currently, over half the districts in my state are failing for one reason or another. If a district continues to fail, their funding can be cut – along with other penalties. All of this puts school and students into a pretty sad situation.

I never truly realized how much until this year. I don’t know how I missed this or why I didn’t pay closer attention to what is happening. Whatever the reason, I am saddened by what I am seeing.

Several of my co-workers and I were looking at the “list” of kids that are cross-registering out of our district this year. Each of them were kids that were struggling students; a number of them were “my” kids – the ones I’ve blogged about – the ones that I have poured my heart into – the ones that are kids in trouble that need extra help. I sighed as I mentally said good-bye to them. It didn’t hit me until someone said “This is going to help with AYP.”

It’s true.

In an tragic sense, it’s a cause for celebration among districts when their “kids in trouble” bail out and head to other districts. Along with their problems, they take their failing test scores with them. Those scores become another district’s problem; it puts another district at risk. It saves your own.

I hate this.

The very kids that we should be helping most become liabilities to school districts. No district wants to risk the loss of funding. The kids are becoming casualties. In essence, we are leaving more children behind now that we’ve adopted “no child left behind”. Districts are better off without them.

I’m angry.

One neighboring district with a large student population has come right out and said – they crunch the numbers to find out how many absent kids they can have before being cited. After that number has been determined, they tell their slowest kids to stay home the day the test is being administered. As of yet, my district doesn’t play that game – we test 100% of our kids.

Newspapers report the results. People see failing districts and mutter about how bad our schools are. They don’t realize what’s happening behind those doors. They don’t know some districts are failing because two of their kids with Down’s Syndrome weren’t able to pass reading and math tests at the 8^th grade level. They don’t realize that some are failing because too many kids failed to show up the day the test was given. They don’t realize how many variables are.

All that aside – my heart is breaking for those lost kids – the ones no district wants to claim.

Fuck the whole thing – THOSE kids have always been my very favorites. While I enjoy teaching and working with the higher achievers too, I utterly love the challenge of the troubled kids. To many many districts and administrators those kids are simply liabilities.

It sucks – welcome to NCLB.

Peace

When we bought this place, the hub was thrilled to have a giant detached garage where he could store his toys. The building is commonly called the “Man Cave”. In it he stores boats, 4-wheelers, the mower, snowmobiles, fishing gear, ski equipment, etc. What once looked like a giant, roomy outbuilding is fast becoming filled to the brim.

We also have a very small barn on our property. We cleaned the place out so we could use that to store patio furniture and gardening stuff – the barn is more “my” outside space. That said, I hate going in there – it’s musty, dusty, spidery, and buggy creepy – not my thing!

Our house has a two stall attached garage as well. The plan for this space (other than storing vehicles) was shelving for holiday stuff, a place to keep the trash and recycling bins, and stuff like that. Nowhere in our plan was “Mouse Condo” – yet, the little buggers have decided to make our home their home.

They have settled into the garage in alarming numbers. Mancub has become a master mouse trapper. He’s baiting, setting, and dumping the dead mice on a daily basis. It’s simply disgusting!

If that wasn’t bad enough, they little creatures discovered the closet in my sunroom! My house has three floors of living space – the sunroom and foyer are on a floor by themselves. The sunroom is one of my favorite rooms in this house – it has a lot of windows, skylights, a woodstove, our hot tub, and a gazillion plants. It’s a wonderful place to curl up in a cushy chair and read a book.

In one corner of the room is a large walk in storage closet. I keep all kinds of things in this space. This is where my mistake began – I put a small bag of bird seed in thei. The damn bag may have well been a neon sign saying “Hello Mice – The Buffet is OPEN”. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Fortunately, the rest of the house is rodent free. We’ve set traps everywhere we could think of, and all of them have remained empty. But, between the storage closet and the attached garage, I’m utterly and completely disgusted, horrified, repulsed, and cruded out.

I cannot WAIT until they are gone. In the meantime, my mighty mouse trapping son will remain hard at work.

Yuk!

Peace

Summer decided to show up this week. It’s f’ing hot and sticky outside and I’m fast becoming an ornery wench.

I have loved the way June, July, and the first part of August were. The days were generally pleasant – rarely above 75 and often below 70 during the day. Evenings were in the 50s and, occasionally, they’d drop to the 40s. We’ve not even taken the cover off our A/C unit!

Suddenly, the sticky icky humid goo that makes a person feel like a soggy rag 24/7 has invaded my space.

It’s not supposed to last – within a couple days I’ll be a happy blogger once again!

Can you tell I have ABSOLUTELY nothing to babble about today?

Peace

Today I took the plunge into the world of a new cell contract and technically a new provider. About twelve years ago when I first got a cell phone I went with Cellular One – they were about the only provider that provided service to this area.

I’ve been happy with them. When everyone else was on minute plans, I was happily dealing with unlimited minutes for less money. Things were good – then AT&T came along and bought up my company. They continued to honor Cell One contracts and would do so until you needed a new phone. When the old ones conked out, you had to switch over if you wanted a new phone.

Even now companies like Verizon have ignored the area where I live so it was a no-brainer to simply go with AT&T. I could use other services as long as I didn’t plan on using them in my own town, workplace, or house.

I’d put off the switch as long as I could. My own phone was dying a slow death and within the last month both cubs ran their phones through the washing machine. Only the hub’s SIX year old phone was going strong.

I pranced into AT&T, set up a plan, picked up four shiny new phones, and eagerly hurried home to learn how to use them. Babycub chose a phone she thought was adorable. For the hub, I picked up the most basic and simple phone I could find. I knew anything with even a wee bit of advanced technology would send him into a tailspin. Finding a phone to suit him was a challenge. Boycub and I have the same phones – different colors.

The cheapo hubby phone and the adorable Babycub phone seem to be just peachy keen fine. The phones I purchased for Boycub and I sucketh. Both of us had more bars on our older phones. Reception here at my house bites the biggie and has me crazed. I’m back to the days of standing on one’s head on the corner of the deck while holding a piece of aluminum to get any kind of reception.

Needless to say – I am pissed!

I went back to the store determined to buy a more expensive (therefore, in my mind, better) phone. The phone dude suggested I keep this one for a couple of days to see if things improved. Like an idiot, I did. I came home, made a few calls, and quickly realized that my new phone is a terrible phone for my house.

I have to make a switcheroo on this thing.

Tomorrow morning I am heading to the lake again – I shall be paying a visit to AT&T on my way out of town. Wish me luck!

For those of you celebrating the 4th – I hope you have an awesome holiday! I’ll be at the lake with a whole lot of family – playing and having a luverly time (hopefully, with a spanking new phone!).

See ya’ when I get back into town!

Peace

Do you ever just want to smack some idiot politician upside the head and ask them wtf they are thinking?

My governor – and do pay attention to this asshole because he’s planning on making a run for the White House in 2012 – needs a good smackin’.

While we are no California, my state is in trouble financially. Our congress put together a bill that would enable the state to continue to offer almost all of the services currently offered. To pay for this, there would have been a tax increase on those making more than $250,000 and on alcohol. Seems like a relatively painless fix to me.

However, enter Emperor Pawlenty who swore to not raise taxes once he was elected. He has what is basically a line item veto or unlimited powers and decided to balance the budget himself. Excuse me? Why the hell do we HAVE a congress if the Emperor is going to do whatever the fuck he wants anyway?

Can you tell I am pissed?

This asshole has stuck to his “no new taxes” throughout his reign over my state. He’s simply cut cut cut and passed the need to tax or raise fees onto local governments. Shit still goes up, but the Emperor will be able to honestly say “when I was Emperor of Minnesota, I balanced the budget without raising taxes”. What a jackass.

Yesterday he announced “his” budget for my state. It’s going to hurt so many people horribly. There will be cuts to the healthcare benefits of the poor. There will be cuts to numerous other social programs that are there to help people.  Public schools k-12 will have their state aid payments deferred for months. This means schools will have to borrow money to make their bills. Higher education institutions will have to make drastic cuts to get past the cuts they are facing. City, county, and township governments are going to be scrambling to balance their budgets and finding new ways to take on fees to help make up the difference.

Essentially, the middle and lower classes just got fucked by the governor. Those who could afford to kick in a bit more won’t be hit at all – additional fees or local taxes don’t tend to hit people making quarter of a million dollar salaries anywhere nearly as badly as those making twenty grand a year.

Financially, my family is relatively stable. I don’t like additionally fees, but we can handle them.  We have health insurance. My heart goes out to those who cannot afford additional costs or have to make a choice between food and a trip to the doctor.

Oh, I guess it doesn’t matter. I guess I should be lucky that I have an Emperor that didn’t raise taxes. After all, he did keep a promise.

Peace

“Do you smell that?”

That’s how it started. Girlcub was sniffing and wrinkling her nose in dismay as the pungent odor of skunk wafted through our abode. Almost immediately, Boycub came flying up the stairs from the family room to add his two cents to the mutters and grumbles of the girl people of the house.

The little smelly skunk wasn’t IN the house, but he or she certainly left their smelly mark. Something outside must have spooked it into letting loose a spray of ugliness that spread from the great indoors into our living space. Yuk. That’s all I can say.

When it was bedtime Boycub opted to crash on the living room sofa because the floor where his room is seemed to be even more rank than the rest of the house. Not long after I’d drifted off to dreamland, I heard the Yorkie barking furiously. Boycub shooshed the dog while I laid in my bed thinking “Wow, the last time she barked like that we had a bear. I should get up and check………….” That’s as far as I got before I drifted back into slumber.

About three a.m. something woke me and I wandered into the kitchen for a drink of water. Boycub woke up and mentioned the barking and the bear possibility. We wandered downstairs to the sunroom to flip on the floodlights that would light up the part of the yard that houses my birdfeeders. Yes, we’d been “beared” once again.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr (that’s me, not the bear growling)

This pisses me off! I held off with the feeders after the last time this black demon raided my yard. I coaxed my birds back with sunflower seed and suet goodness. It has been a while without that damn furry thief stealing into my yard under the cover of darkness – I thought I was safe.

No! It destroyed one thistle feeder and stole another. It mangled a shepherd’s hook that held a hummingbird feeder and a peanut/suet feeder. It bent the peanut/suet feeder in half and laid in one of my gardens while trying to shove it’s bear face into what was left of the feeder.

This is war! I will not go quietly into the night with my tail between my legs while my happy little birds suffer sunflower seed withdrawal. I shall endeavor to defeat the furry beast that plagues me.

I’ve contemplated the value of a bear skin rug and the taste of bear sausage and decided neither appeal to me. The bear shall live. However, I’m going to show it a thing or two. My feeders will be slipped outside early each morning and brought inside each night. I refuse to feed the large furry beasts that share my woods – they can fend for themselves.

Peace

I befuddled my cubs when I came home from work today and announced who my “dinner dates” were. There are a couple of women teachers that are *ponders how to put this nicely* – odd. Yeah, that’s a nice way of saying they are a bit different.

The two of them are joined at the hip and pretty exclusive. It’s never bothered me because they don’t tend to be the type of people I hang out with anyway. We get along fine at work, but that’s it. They are the kind of teachers that tend to be punitive and happy to write out detentions, take away baseball caps, and follow minute little rules that I’m content to ignore.

Today one of them asked me to join the two of them and another teacher at a local restaurant that was doing some kind of teacher appreciation thing. What the heck, why not? My dinner plans included making tacos, but there were leftovers in the fridge for the fam – I said I’d go.

They were going to call me over ninety minutes ago.

Yup, I’ve been stood up.

My kids are giggling about this one. My hub is doing a really bad job of not saying things like “you’ve been dumped by the geek squad”. My bestest work friend snorked with laughter.

I’m simply hungry because my luverly family inhaled the leftover lasagna and there isn’t much else that I feel like eating.

Let me just say, I think this is rude. Certainly we aren’t best buddies, but I’m never rude to them. We chit chat at school – we never hang out away from the building. Initially the rest of us tried to get them involved when we were all going out, but they turn us down all the time. We’ve pretty much given up.

Hmph! I think I’ll invite ‘em to Dairy Queen and drop their ice cream cones!

Peace

Who knew a US passport that is supposedly good for ten years is actually only good for nine and a half years – or that one issued to a kid is good for four and a half years rather than the five years it says when issued?  Who knew the expiration date was actually six months prior to what it says inside the passport?

Certainly I was clueless. (hush, I realize there are a lot of things I am clueless about, but I didn’t think international travel was one of ‘em)

A student asked me about this. He’s traveling with me to Europe next year and his passport is set to expire a few months after we return. His father told him to ask me if he could still use it. I was puzzled. Seriously, if the expiration date says “June 1, 2010”, I would assume that as long as I was safely back inside the US borders before that date, there wouldn’t be a problem. Instead, if your passport is set to expire June 1, 2010, you may not be able to use it after December of 2009.

*blinks*

When my student asked I checked with another teacher that travels with me. Like me, she didn’t think the “six months before expiration” thing made any sense. At least she didn’t until she and her son headed off to fly to Germany. They headed to the airport a few days ago, her son’s passport expires in July; they ran into problems at the airport because of the six month thing.

Apparently some countries will not allow people whose passports are going to be expiring into their country. Because some countries are pretty tight about this six month window, a number of airlines will no longer let anyone fly out if they are carrying a passport that falls within the six month window.

Color me silly, but why have an expiration date that doesn’t seem to mean much?

Every time I’ve gone through customs – and I do this a LOT – they ask me “how long are you planning on staying in the country” (among other questions). I should think if I said I was going to be there longer than my passport would allow, they could tell me then.  If I were going to stick around and cause problems, an expiration date or a six month window wouldn’t stop me – idiots, lawbreakers, terrorists, and the like don’t necessarily worry about being legal anyway.

Oh well, I’ve now double, triple, and quadruple checked on the fam’s passports. We’re all set to scamper in and out of the country over the summer. Nobody is “expiring” any time soon.

Peace