Two weeks ago I was given some good news, and last Thursday the news was officially announced so now I am free to talk about the situation.
In Jan of 2009 I was asked to work a few days at a second school while the person who holds the job was on a short leave. That short leave turned into long term leave, which has now turned ugly.
So for the past year I have been doing the job of two people for the pay of 1 person. I have had to split my time between 2 buildings, 2 sets of students, 2 sets of guidance counselors and 2 sets of administration. It has been hard but I have somehow managed to keep my head above water.
I was told that I needed to increase my numbers at both schools in order to only be assigned to one school for the next year. I also needed to increase my numbers in order to ensure that the program would be continued. With the way the budget is right now anything and everything is on the chopping block. Well at one school I took my number from 50 to 89. The other school stayed the same, this year I have 25 and I currently only have 25 registered for next year. I have many theories as to why there is such a big difference in the numbers, but I will not go into them here in a public space. All I can say is that I actively recruited students at both schools. At the school with the lower number I did MORE than I did at the school with the higher number. I don’t know why the recruitment did not work, but I do have theories, but once again will not go into those in writing in public.
I was happy with the number of 89 since state law limits me to 100 students. I was disappointed in 25. However, the county was happy and they let me know that they were impressed with the growth at the one school.
I was officially told last Thursday that I would be at only 1 school and that I would be assigned to Creekview. Creekview is the school I was originally hired to work at, and it is also the school my son will be attending next school year. While I will miss the people and students at Sequoyah, I can not continue to serve two schools and remain sane.
However, I don’t think that Caleb was as excited about the news as I was.