The Beginning of the End?

While the kids are enjoying one last day of summer vacation before their first day of school tomorrow, I am stewing and felt like I needed to vent a bit.

Things in Albion, as I have mentioned before, are not great. Michigan has been hit hard by this whole down economy mess and the population of the entire state is getting smaller every day as people move away to try to find some way to support their families. Then there was the fiasco at the college where everyone's jobs were on the line and we were all wondering if we'd be leaving the state too. Unfortunately for some, fifteen full time positions were cut, including the father of one of Kendall's best friends. (This is an amazing family who has been instrumental in the community and especially the schools, so this is a huge blow to this town.) Luckily for us, (for now) Kalen's job is still safe, though I predict another round of layoffs soon due to low enrollments this year. And then, as if that weren't bad enough, our public school system has hit bottom. We are now ranked in the bottom 5% of the state. We did not make AYP again (that's adequate yearly progress as based on the standardized tests that the students took last year) which means that the administrators are having to scramble to figure out a plan to get everything back on track. But if we don't make AYP again this year, one of the options is to actually close the schools and ship the kids to neighboring districts. And unfortunately, at the same time that the district has to make all these positive changes, they are losing both students and funding and are having to lay off more teachers and staff.

It's heartbreaking really. Last year I was complaining that Kendall's class had 35 kids in it. They were eventually able to lower it to 30 by creating a combined class of 3rd/4th graders. And the other 4th grade class also had around 30 kids as well. This year when we went to look at the class lists and see who Kendall has for his 5th grade teacher, I was STUNNED to see that there were only two 5th grade classes and each class had only 22 kids! I knew that a lot of families were fed up and taking their children to other schools, but I had no idea how many were doing that. And actually it makes me so furious. Because it's the parents with children who are the most involved and the most intelligent who by staying could actually help turn things around. I get the idea that you want what's best for your kids, but I also think that what's best for the kids might just be supporting their own community and seeing this thing through together. Albion has some amazing teachers and we have been really blessed to have our children in their classes. They are so devoted to their careers and love what they do so much that they are willing to stick out this horrible situation too. So many of them have taken pay cuts to their already low salaries and I don't know any teacher who doesn't pay for supplies and materials out of their own pockets. Our children have been taught well and learned so much under their direction. We made a decision awhile back when things first started to go downhill and we started seeing some of our friends removing their children from the local schools. We decided that we would see this thing through to the end, whatever that may be. We felt sure that the economy would eventually turn around and that things would return to the way they were when we first moved to this town. Now with so much less support from caring parents and families and even less caring government, I think we may be fighting a losing battle. I hope I'm wrong. We'll still work hard to see this through to the end...I'm just thinking the end is going to be bitter.

The kids are are really excited about their first day tomorrow and I wanted that post to be positive, so I wanted to keep this rant separate from their fun first day post.