Maybe it’s my imagination, but I think this is the slowest week I’ve ever experienced.
I want it to be Friday. I want to stay home for two days. More would be better, but I could survive with two days.
The march of insane parents goes on. The kids are getting hyper as the holidays approach, and the teachers and administrators are exhausted. The BS goes on uninterrupted, perhaps even increased. Though it’s hard to imagine it being possible.
The rogue administrator I complained about last school year drove away all our faithful custodians, we are having to make do with half the people we had last year, and the new ones are temp workers–meaning they don’t have job security to protect, AND are looking for permanent work while we fart around taking months to select people. They’re going to re-advertise the positions, since one person they wanted to hire failed the lift test (can you lift 75 pounds?) and the other can’t be located to be offered the job.
So our forty+ year-old school is looking her age. And worse. Maybe half of it gets cleaned each night.
We’re short monitors, too, since any who could went elsewhere, also mostly due to the rogue admin. We used to have six, now we frequently make do with two. One of those is a wonderful lady who knows the kids, the school, and the job, but she’s eighty and there are things she just can’t do. Her experience makes her invaluable–but she really can’t jump in and break up a five-way fight.
The teachers have all been shuffled. Again, any who could find jobs elsewhere, have left. We lost teachers that had been there fifteen years. The schedule has changed drastically, the subjects have changed, and the assignments have changed. Change is often a good thing–but too much and no one knows what the hell is going on. That’s where we are.
For security reasons, the district wants every kid to have an ID and to wear it. One way to encourage this, is that kids who have their ID (with barcode) get through the lunch line first. Only now the folks in the cafeteria are interpreting this to mean that if they don’t have their ID, they don’t get to eat. I enrolled the sweetest little girl yesterday, eleven, quiet, shy, and kind, from homeschooling. But we don’t have a system in place to supply new kids with IDs. The folks in the cafeteria wouldn’t let her eat lunch. Today I gave her a note to feed her breakfast. They wouldn’t. She didn’t come to me, another girl told me.
I sicced the community rep on them. It’s her job to look out for the kids on things like free meals and helping get clothes and supplies when the parents can’t deal with the demands, and she is damn good at her job. Not to mention she loves looking after the little ones. Little shy girl has an advocate now.  What bothers me is, she shouldn’t need one.
Long and short of it is, the place is a mess. It seems like everything is working together to make things go downhill. We all fight it as best we can, but the paperwork piles up, the mess and broken things accumulate, and the kids suffer.
And I just want to stay home.Â