Gli avvoltoi stanno circondando.

The vultures are circling.  Have you ever been part of a school closing down?  Not one that moves from one building to another, but one that is going to cease to exist.  It's an interesting experience.  Three weeks to go and different departments are already going through the building looking for what they can take.  People want the pictures off our Hall of Fame.  Other schools already want the art work hanging in our halls.  They want to know who gets the seal in the middle of the front hall.

   I got an email from the district department that supplies our teacher and lab computers.  They're sending pallets for me to load all the computers onto.  They wanted me to start as soon as we get done with the end of the year CRT tests - this week.  I sent an email back saying that our teachers were planning on using the computers up into the last week.  They deferred until the end of school.  When I told the principal about this she said that things had gotten so bad in the office that she had requested a postition from the Superintendency.  She got an official letter now that she can show stating that we are still a fully functioning school and that nothing will be taken from the school until the school year is officially over.  

   Frankly, I'm surprised that I was even the slightest bit surprised that educators would need to be told that.

Too numb to feel anything right now.

This is it.

All that's left to do is sit around the house and wait for the 10:00 news and see if my school is closed or not.  I've been to the last 2 Board Meetings, so I think I'll skip this one.  Since there's nothing more to say or do but watch the vote, I figure there's no sense in going.  Plus they are booooooring!

And because I hate posts without pictures, here is one of me close to the end of my senior year.  Can you guess where I am and what kind of car I'm standing next to?

They day after....

If nothing else, last night gave our students the feeling that they could be heard. Student morale was up, talk about who said what and how good this person was filled the halls and classrooms. It was good to see, as the week since the original announcement has been somewhat somber.

Time to update the resume.

It's still not 100%, but from the tone of today's Board meeting I'm seriously discouraged. Thanks to everyone for the wishes for a successful presentation, by all means it was an excellent one. We made them laugh, we made them cry, and the audience gave us a hearty applause at the end. As a matter of fact I would have said it was flawless, shy of one incident, caused by an unnecessary and selfish staff member.

You may have remembered me mentioning a counselor that we got stuck with, because she caused friction wherever she went and the district felt my principal would be the one to handle her. And for a year and a half we did. She had other counselors in tears. She alienated the half of the faculty she came in contact with. She had zero (0, none, nill, nada, nyente) tact when it came to dealing with me and technology issues. But we tolerated her because 99% of the time we she was sequestered in a small corner of the building and we had no contact with her. Did I mention that she is a counselor. Except for during Teacher Appreciation week, when she conviently decided she's a teacher. Because at our school she's really neither. She's also one of those people that insists being called by her title, as in Dr.____, not just Ms.____, or by her first name.

Anyway, we had an awesome presentation, and the principle was wrapping up the whole thing. She mentioned that we have only one counselor, and one intern that is paid for out of one of our high risk grants. At this point this (ahem) counselor starts waving her arms, saying something I didn't hear. She did get the attention of one of the board members who asks the principal again how many counselors we have, saying 'isn't it three?' The principal first tries to deflect it with comments about how this person doesn't have any student load, so they are effectively not a counselor at our school. Another member on the board comes back with 'but you do have three counselors'. This is when our response should have been 'yeah, but you foisted her on us bacause no one else could handle her shit!', but instead we heard 'that was a district decision, we didn't request another counselor'. This is where the board member has the chutzpah, (that's yiddish for cahones) to say 'That isn't true'. Again, we should have returned with 'you lying two faced son of a coyote', but instead my principal just said that they should discuss this some other time and continued on with her closing.

I'm glad that we got the chance to make our case. I'm proud of the presentation we made and I'm proud that we did not just sit back and let things happen to our school. But I can't help feeling defeated.

Pinky and the BrainDead.

I tried doing homework. I really tried. But my brain is fried. It can't think of anything other than this presentation we have on Tuesday. At least I got through the flowchart for my capstone project. One down and, um, I'm not even sure how many more to go. A couple-3. Whatever. I've still got over a week, and frankly, I could present it today and I'd still get my Master's Degree. It will just be nice when I can sleep again. I had a dream the other night, right after the news of the possible school closure. I was in my new classroom. It was in the basement, more like the bowels of the school. The floor was ripped up, the walls were wet, moldy and rust stained. And there was a huge furnace going full blast on one side of the room. It was like a scene out of the Matrix. Not a good scene either. And the Drama teacher's room was right next door. But at least my room was huge, cavernous. Anyway, thank God for Excedrin PM. Cheerio.

Corporate America ain't for me.

.....Now that it's been on the news, I can write about what is public knowledge. Wednesday our principal called an emergency faculty meeting right after school. Just like 3 years ago, they're trying to shut down the school I teach at, and considering the current fiscal situation there is a good chance it's going to happen. Enough of a chance that she asked the powers that be what she can promise her staff concerning placement afterwards and passed that information on to us. Provisional teachers, ones who have been teaching less 3 years or less, are assured that they will still have jobs, those of us who are tenured, been teaching longer than 3 years, are guaranteed placement somewhere.

.....If you have been following my website long enough, you know that I took the job here knowing they wanted to close the school down. You may also know that I've moved around in my career a bit, by choice, so the possibility of changing schools again does not scare me. I've got 14 more years before I can retire and there never was a doubt in my mind that I wouldn't change schools at least a couple times before then.

.....Add to that the fact that as a Math teacher, I'm sure to have some choice in where I end up. Still, I wasn't ready to move on yet, and at the risk of sounding like Reverend Lovejoy's wife, I'm concerned about how well our students will do in a big high school. Over the 3 years we have been a school of around 300 students, we have had many that have tried a large school and have come back. Many of them will be required to travel 6 miles to their home school, where they are used to just walking around the block right now.

.....Anyway, we've been given the task of presenting our defense to the school board next week. Four teachers and I have spent all our free time in the conference room producing a presentation. After day 1 of 6 hours in a room culling through documentation, I decided I really do love teaching. 3 hours into today, day 2, when the principal walked in and asked how we were doing, the science teacher and I clutched our heads and said, at the same time and without prior discussion, "I think my head's going to explode."

.....So, if you wonder why you don't hear from me for the next two weeks, here's my schedule:

• 
  
  This Tuesday : present to school board, and I actually have to make part of the presentation
• 
  
  Wednesday : Human-Computer Interface (HCI) Class
• 
  
  Thursday : Advanced Instructional Design Class
• 
  
  Next Tuesday : public hearing on my school's closure
• 
  
  Wednesday : Final presentation for HCI
• 
  
  Thursday : Final presentation for Master's Capstone Project

And in between all that : Teach, fix computers and prepare for all of the above. Yea!
Oh, and did I mention I have to go out and buy some nice pants 'cause jeans aren't nice enough to address the board? (The principal told me that I had to wear a tie - and then started laughing because she knew that would never happen!)