Still Standing

 It took a special meeting, but the new school board here in Oakland rescinded the work of the previous iteration of the school board here in Oakland. Those schools that were on the list to be closed, the "chopping block" as we referred to them, are no longer part of a plan to save money by shutting down schools the prior group of directors felt were drains on their budget. 

What does this mean to me? Well my Cal Ripken-esque streak at this one particular institution will perhaps remain intact. The fever dream that comes to me from time to time where I am carried out of the school after becoming useless remains. If I move on at this point, it will be entirely my own decision. There might be a few more years of former students passing by after school, pausing just long enough to look me over and ask, "Are you still here?"

Unraveling all these feelings, and there are more than a few, will take some time. Relief being the first, having removed the Sword of Damocles that was hanging over all our heads. The next one is a little tricky, since it mixes in the appreciation for the current school board's resolution and vote along with the very real possibility that we have now passed through a portal which leads to more inspection and evaluation and ultimately more stress compounded on top of that felt by your standard urban educator. 

And we still want our playground back. That particular axe which I had been grinding for decades came ever-so-close to being removed from the equation a year and a half ago, when a number of fresh voices came to the fore here and pushed a plan through to get some trees and some grass and some level playing surfaces on which our kids could play. Plans were drawn up and run through the cycle that would eventually be approved by a school board that was also harboring a need to shut us down. Once that decision was made, the playground was handed off to a school elsewhere, leaving the poorly patched barren asphalt plane which apparently our kids deserved. 

Add that to the outdoor water fountain that has been broken for two years, the cracked windows, the overlooked infrastructure bits that were overlooked because of the closed tag that was being processed in the background since COVID struck. Maybe the wish on high was that some or all of these troublesome schools and kids might just disappear. Out of sight, out of mind. And budget. 

Because eventually it's a manipulation that transforms a certain amount of money into a certain amount of education. That includes paying for buildings and maintenance and food and band-aids and chairs and pencils and books and oh by the way people to make it all work. It's not free. I get that. It takes a village to run a school, and a much larger village to come together and make this plan work. 

I want to believe that is what is happening. I will wait and see. Just like I have been for the past twenty-six years.