The Game of Life

I've sat on the sidelines the past few weeks.  Booing and hissing with my fellow teachers as we are moved from those sidelines of life and put into the middle of a game we can not play.

Our school has been slated to close.  Our family threatened to be torn apart.  In this day and age, an all too common stadium scene and one some people are uninterested in hearing.  "It's happening everywhere"  "it's another product of the economy"  "it's something we all have to live with now days" doesn't help morale any.  Some of it is true, and I will be the first to say the facts don't lie.

My school district is facing an astronomical deficit.  (Made even more astronomical by someone who teaches reading.  Not dealing with numbers regularly makes the word "millions" even more daunting!)

The main charge seems to be that closing our small school, with the very old rickety building in a poor part of town would be a simple answer to one part of the budget crisis.  But simple for whom.

It is often on here you can find me whining about my small town.  I've never been a "big city" person, have no desire to live in one.  But when I find myself an hour and a half away from museums, shops, and other signs of what I consider to be normal life -- gasp even a Target -- I get a little stir crazy.  With the events from the past two weeks, I have been humbled and have come to learn the most important lesson from this small town:  sticking together.

As a teaching unit, we have remained fairly silent on our school closing.  Meaning we have not publicly spoken out (but oh if you were a fly on the wall of our copy room) and we have only signed a polite petition requesting our school to stay open.  However, we have (to use what I consider to be the "mother" of all southern words possibly beating out ya'll) BLESSED to have such strong parental support from the families at our school, even extending out into the community as well.  The Chamber of Commerce, realtors, and many others with absolutely no ties to our school have spoken out at board hearings, written to newspapers, called the radio station, and so much more.  I feel very honored to live in such a place that works so hard for something they know and feel is important and valuable.  Not only for me, but for my child reaps the benefits of this special school.

We should know the outcome in about a week and a half, good or bad.  Until then, we've come away from wallowing in our sorrow to discussing the matter calmly and rationally and extremely intelligently.  What a wonderful experience for my 5th graders to see just what we are allowed to do in this country...I really hope they see a positive result from all of this, I say that for mostly personal reasons, but most importantly, I hope they are as proud as I am of everything everyone has done to fight for our school.