I take a long singular look at the little girl seated at my table. She is decked out to beat the band. Fabulous hair, new leggings which she proudly shows off, clickety clackety boots and all of it topped off with a magnificent glitter bomb pink bow. She is ready for the stage. I complement her. She smiles shyly. She isn’t one to talk very much. There are noticeable gaps in her vocabulary and speech flow when she does talk. I take a sip of my tea and then I pose a question. “Where have you been the last two days? We missed you. Why weren’t you in school?” She looks down and away and considers. “I forgot about school”, she finally states. I look at her for a minute. “You forgot that you had school?” She nods yes. I try again. “What about your Mother? Did she forget about school? Did she forget that you come to school on Mondays and Tuesdays?” She looks at the table and then back at me. “Yes”, she answers. “She forgot about school”. I make one more attempt and know that I will be forced to move on because that is what we do in the Rochester City School District. We just keep making the best of it only we are not making anything ‘best’ at all. We just keep moving on. “You’re telling me that your Mom forgot about school?” She picks up a paper lying on the table and answers steadily, “Yes. She forgot”.
Early this morning, I step outside and realize instantly that something has changed. There is the finest wispy white layer of frost covering all the houses across the street and the front lawns, scattered between the middle and the edges of the street. I take a deep breath. It is marvelous and clean and crisp and I want to enjoy it as long as I can. I climb into the car and start the engine. It is not yet 7am and the dashboard registers a cool 38 degrees. I open the passenger window and the rear window and ride to work this way for as long as I can stand it. Somewhere over the railroad tracks by the edge of Jefferson and before I make a left on West Henrietta, I give up and close them. My fingers are numb on the wheel.
I’m listening to all the news coverage about the floundering Rochester City School District and the $30 million dollar shortfall. I am never surprised by the things I hear about this place where so many of us work and where almost 30,000 children attempt to get some semblance of an education. What surprises me is that the pundits on NPR are always surprised. Then I remember that the only people who are flabbergasted at the condition we are in are those who don’t work in the district. You have to be in the thick of it to get it. You can’t make some of this stuff up. Unless you are here, I mean really here…you will continue to be surprised.
The chief financial officer for the district resigned last night. I suppose it would be hard to justify that pesky $30 million dollar gap when everyone downtown swears that they heard last spring that everything was good for this upcoming year. That stubborn $30 million…
We have a letter from the new superintendent, who I assume by now is sorry he took the job. There are many areas where there will be cuts. One potential cutback catches my eye. Substitute teachers. The district pays out a load of money for substitute teachers. Because there will be no budget for those teachers, all the special subject personnel such as music, ESOL, gym, art, foreign language, and speech teachers will be alerted first thing in the morning on any particular day that they will be in classrooms as substitutes. They will be thrown into classrooms where they are not wanted and where they do not want to be. There will be quite a fracas and this will go on until the union files a grievance due to all the services being denied a whole group of kids and then the whirly gig will go around and around again until someone yells “Uncle” or jumps off and then we shall see what we shall see.
I listen to the teacher in the room next to mine attempt to teach Spanish to a group of sixth graders. I am going to have to close the door to eat my lunch because I can not tolerate what I am hearing. Every attempt the teacher makes to teach is greeted with resistance, interruption, rude comments and insults. They continually talk over her about nothing at all. Nonsense. Someone makes a snide comment about another student’s clothing and then it really takes off. “Stop talking about my Mother”. “She’s looking at me funny, Miss? Miss?” In between I hear the steady voice of the teacher trying to explain to one student how to conjugate a series of Spanish verbs. The student tries, makes a smart remark to his neighbor, tries again and then starts singing loudly. Another girl gives up, pulling her hoodie over her head and stretches back to take a nap. They will all pass the class. They will pass, not because they know anything. They will pass because the teacher will have no choice. They think they understand so much. I close the door and go back to lunch.
690 Saint Paul 