Jabberwock Softly

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird,
and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

~Lewis Carroll

Sorry.

This is my second feisty post in a week. Fortunately for my other sites, and unlike last week’s Kanye rant, I’ll keep this particular bit of self bluster contained to a single domain.

This is the first personal rant I’ve published and I will not be using any names. However, there are some things I’ve just gotta get out and I would like these thoughts to go somewhere more lasting than MacJournal. Since you’ve always been rather patient with me (thanks for that) I figure this is as good a place as any. So um…thanks.

Here we go.

At the end of last school year, Cindy hesitantly assumed the position of Vice President at our school’s PTA for the 2009-2010 calendar year. I admit, though I am of course supportive of our school and was appreciative of the nomination, I wasn’t thrilled with the demands it would inevitably place on our schedule. Though I knew she would approach the position with her usual enthusiasm and tireless effort, I wasn’t too keen on the commitment in the first place, considering the piles currently on our plate and the thirty minute commute to the school which lies in both directions.

Cindy has been teaching for twenty years and has coordinated national conferences for our nation’s most respected leaders in education, including a literacy conference in Washington DC that had a component designed specifically for best methods to reach members of the PTA. She has been intimately involved with a dozen different PTA’s across the nation (from posh neighborhoods with fences around the trees rather than the campus, to an overcrowded school sandwiched between a duet of crack houses). One would imagine she carried the qualifications necessary to sit on the board of a small school with a student body totaling less than 500 students.

But no.

Unfortunately, this particular PTA shares the elements of a trashy TV network pilot that wouldn’t have a chance of getting to air due to its overabundance of unimaginative cliches. You know, duplicity, sabotage and general bad behavior; the sort of stuff adults get away with all too often, but that any reasonable parent would sever with a series of swift consequences.

Cindy, who tells me everything from the things that make her shake in her sleep to when I am wearing a cowlick I can’t see, has kept the majority of this most recent malignant blather from me, probably because she doesn’t want my fingers to go off and do something like what they’re doing right now.

I’ve lived with Cindy for a dozen years, and know when she’s deeply hurting, yet trying to muscle her way through a week without crying. I would have figured it out anyhow, but the few emails that filtered into our general family inbox rather than directly to her private account have told me a story that is sad, altogether disappointing, and rather indicative of the many things that are wrong with our current state of education.

“Let’s have a rummage sale!”

That’s the idea suggested by Cindy and shot down four times last year by an old guard more interested in circles of endless squabble than stepping into any forward momentum. Finally, in the middle of July, after the school year was over, a previous member of the board suggested the brilliant brainstorm herself.

All in favor say, “Aye.”

It was a great suggestion and Cindy took the ball and ran with it. In the first twelve days of the school year she has logged in 80 hours of work, all from behind the decaying walls of small minded behavior. She is not alone. Her hours have transmitted their toil to our children and household in general. In itself this is fine, as every family should do all they can to make their school the best that it can be.

Cindy fell to sleep on Saturday morning at 1:30 in the morning and woke up three hours later to set up the sale.

The rummage sale was a success, generating a tidy sum of money to a PTA budget that is presently on red alert. To say her efforts were not appreciated would be untrue. The principal of the school, the president of the PTA, every teacher who has opened their mouth in Cindy’s direction, and more wonderful parents than we can count, have all been responsive in all the right ways: encouraging, grateful and above all congenial.

But you know what they say about the rotten ones spoiling the whole barrel, right?

Perhaps this is one of the reasons education in our country is walking with a limp in both legs. I’d always assumed it was a score of other things mostly mired in miles of red tape, but if this is how parent volunteers are behaving on campuses across the country, it’s no wonder we’re waist deep in you know what.

I know this sort of rant is uncharacteristic, but I will sleep better tonight for getting it on the page.

To all the many families at the rummage sale on Saturday, thank you so much for inflating the day with your wonderful spirit. It was an awesome community event and a terrific time was had by all. I enjoyed bonding with my fellow parents and was immeasurably proud of the work that our family, alongside so many others, were able to contribute to the strength of our school.

To anyone reading this who shares a school setting with my family, who has a question or concern about anything I have said, I am always open to dialogue. You may email me or give me a call at any time.

To anyone reading this who takes particular umbrage with anything I’ve said today, you probably owe my wife an apology.

To Cindy, please don’t be mad at me, baby. I don’t serve the board, I don’t work for the school, and someday I want our children to know that when it came time, I said what needed saying. I could not be more proud of the effort you have given or the manners you have displayed. I admire your silent strength and unwillingness to discuss the toxicity all around you anywhere near campus. I would not have been able to do the same. I love you.

Writer Dad

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