A Rough Kind of Day

Tequila, also known more frequently as "Fat Cat"

Well, it's been an interesting week so far. Hopefully, it will grow LESS interesting as the days continue to pass.  Not only did we have a student suicide last week, but there was also one in Buffalo, a 14 year old boy.. That one, sadly, made headlines, as being connected to bullying issues. And then someone, not sure who and I guess it doesn't really matter, decided to call a Buffalo news station to let them know about "our" suicide, so that it, too, could be linked to bullying (a fact which is totally un-knowable at this point. It is pure conjecture, as Lee did not leave a note to explain his reasons, and some kids say yes, he WAS a target, other kids, including my own, say no, he had lots of friends and seemed like a pretty happy kid. IF he was bullied, his family was not aware of it, which would seem rather odd to me. Whatever. At this point., I'm really, really SICK of the whole topic, tired of people arguing about it, tired of people blaming the school for not stopping the bullying, tired of people in the school blaming the parents. Tired of blame, period.  It's a huge issue, but it encompasses SO MUCH. Having the TV crew come to my little town, my little school, did NOTHING but enflame people, fan the fires.I feel for my Superintendent right now, who is taking many of the hits on public forums - like it is somehow solely HER fault. I stopped by her office yesterday morning to check on her, and found her pretty upset. It only got worse as the day went on. There were, by the end of the day, rumors that

Annie. I love her smiles!

the mother of the child who died had called the news herself and was showing up at the Board meeting last night, also, along with the news again, to begin the process of publicly blaming the school.  Oddly, and uncomfortably, her father, the child's grandfather, has been our longstanding School Board President for many years. I could not figure out how that was going to go. Again, there is SO MUCH BACKGROUND to this whole story that comes into play, and it isn't even worth it to attempt to go into it all. Nothing could be better than to take what we can from it to try hard to ensure it doesn't happen to others, and then move on.  Dwelling on the negative, feeding on it, is like swallowing poison and then passing the glass around.

Yeah, the grass needs cutting,, but it was too nice a day to do that

In addition, as if that weren't enough for my Super to be dealing with, apparently there was another issue last week as well, that only came to public light this week. A bus driver for our pre-K program left a three year old on the bus, strapped into her car seat, in the seat directly behind her. How she missed her, forgot her, I have no idea. But the fact is, she drove the bus into the bus garage, got off the bus, and left the little girl alone on the bus. Sadly, she was also ONLY discovered when another parent called the bus garage because her son left his backpack on the bus, and the transportation supervisor went to check for it on that bus. Thank GOD. Literally, thank GOD that child forgot his backpack. THOSE parents were DEFINITELY on the agenda for last night's board meeting.  By early afternoon yesterday, it was pretty clear that as many of the faculty and staff , as many of us, who could show up to present a supportive front for our Superintendent, our school, our transportation supervisor (who felt HORRIBLE, absolutely positively HORRIBLE about the bus driver, though it was no more his fault that she left the child on the bus than the superintendent's fault a child committed suicide)  would be good, and necessary.  The day was an unsettling one, to say the least..

I love watching the sun go down in the west, over my side fence, through the trees. 

It made me glad I had had such a good weekend. I kept going back to it yesterday, in my mind. It was a tense and long day. It ended ok. There were a lot of us there. I was proud of that. We are good, most of us, and do ANYTHING we can to stop and address bullying. We don't deserve the "rap" we're getting. ONE of us even has a letter in her file for attempting to stop bullying a year or so ago (yeah, I can KIND of laugh about it now, but it's STILL a sore subject) . There were no news crews there. The Board President thanked us all for coming to support our school.  The parents of that poor baby left on the bus were there, and when they went into executive session with them to discuss that personnel issue, it was clear nothing bad was going to happen. We were able to head home.
     But it was the picture of my fat cat, and my smiling dog, and the sun going down in my back yard Sunday that somehow were able to keep me grounded yesterday.  I had a GREAT weekend. It's not been a great week, but I think it's getting better.