Yesterday, we had kind of a crazy day.
When we moved here, we were less than thrilled about putting Carter in the elementary school here on base. Now some may say or think, "Geez, a DoDs school at Edwards is probably great! Tons of smart pilots, engineers and civilians work there. Some of the cream of the crop!" However, 'tis not the case.
The school is not a DoD school, it is a public school, therefore any joe schmoe can attend. Not that I am for denying
anyone an education. But our surrounding area is less than sketchy out here, therefore we seem to bring in some of the dregs of humanity. So, if you work on base, whether you work as a Test Pilot or you flip burgers at the burger king, or you clean the floors at the shopette, your child can attend school on base. Which is the case in most residential areas, if you lived close to a school, you go to that school regardless of your parent's occupation. Makes sense, right? But, the problem lies in several places. Like I mentioned earlier, the surrounding area (from where all the civilian or contract workers come from) is pretty low income, high poverty, and has high drug/crime rates. Having a public school on base allows the drug/crime problem to come onto base.
But wait! Security forces nips that in the butt, right? Nope, SF has NO JURISDICTION on the school, because it is a public school. For instance, to make a 'drug raid' they have to announce it first, and then the county comes in to perform the raid. This allows everyone enough time to stash their 'stash' in plenty of time.
Also, the SF don't check the inside of every kids pocket that come onto base for school everyday. Sure, every now and then they perform a random check at the gate (where they do have jurisdiction), but that hardly seems to puts a dent in the problem.
This is mostly a problem for junior high and high school obviously, but the fact that it is happening under everyone's noses right down the road from the elementary school is disturbing. When there's big behavior/drug/crime problems at the high school and junior high, that means a lot of those older kids have younger siblings at the elementary school. While these littler ones might not have drugs in their pockets, a lot of times they have bad attitudes, bad behavior or are having inappropriate conversations with your children during recess. All of the school/families are connected, if it affects one of the schools, the other schools feel the trickle down as well.
Other problems with the school on base is that they do not have art, or music, or SCIENCE. They pay the teachers very poorly and the kids only go to school from 8ish to 1:30ish (depending on the grade) to cut down on what they have to pay teachers. Carter will actually go everyday from 7:50 to 11:50. This is not an Edwards issue, it is a CA public school issue. They cut corners for the budget every place they can, and it's evident.
Compound those issues with the fact that we're all 20 miles from the closest town and there aren't any other good options as alternatives. All the other public schools 'in town' are worse than the Edwards one. Sure, we could fork over the money for private school. But add 40 minutes of gas two times a day on top of tuition and it starts getting outrageous.
Sooo, back to "we weren't thrilled about sending Carter".
When we arrived, a friend of mine had some great news. She had basically convinced their private school teacher (from last year) to come onto base and teach Kindergarten and 1st grade. Her and several friends had carpooled and taken their kids off base to a church for Kindergarten. However, the church stops at Kindergarten and they would have all had to enroll at the elementary school on base. The teacher and everyone seemed to be on board. It would be a small class, 10 kids, and we were going to hold it at the chapel. My friend, along with the teacher, had put in hours of leg work recruiting kids, calculating costs, getting approval from the chapel, school calendars, etc. Cory and I were so excited that Carter was going to get to be a part of this great opportunity. Everything I had heard from the other parents about the teacher was nothing less than spectacular. Yay! We held some informal meetings, paid for our supplies (They were going to use the ABecka curriculum) and were set to start on Sept 4th.
Yesterday, all of the sudden, news came down that we were not allowed to use the chapel. We were devastated. We don't know why or how the problem arose, because we had already asked the chaplain's permission. His daughter was even going to be in the class! But JAG gave us a call and said, no way. We couldn't run a business out of the chapel. We're not sure if someone caught wind of what we were doing and told on us? Not that we were trying to be sneaky, but we had no idea what we were trying to do would have been a problem. No one we asked had seemed to think it was a problem, and how JAG came to questioning it, is beyond us.We would have to pay a good extra amount to use a services building, and no one had a reliable house to offer. Without a location, we just...couldn't make it work. To add to all the confusion and sudden craziness yesterday, almost everyone in the group had unenrolled their children from the base elementary school, and the Verizon cell tower was down, so no one had phone service. Because of that, several people were in the dark about the whole situation until the evening. Luckily, I had not actually un-enrolled Carter yet. I had actually tried to call the school yesterday morning to un-enroll him before we knew anything was wrong, and I couldn't get service.
Several of us moms spent yesterday in a panic, trying to come up with something to make it work, and we hit a roadblock at every corner. The use of the chapel was the key to making the whole thing work, the foundation. Without it, the whole thing just crumbled at our feet.
So today I took Carter to Kindergarten orientation and he will start school on Monday on base. I am still upset for all the moms that were hoping for this to work out. But I guess better now than in three weeks, right?
We very briefly met the teacher and filled out some paperwork. We learned the drop-off, pickup rules (um...there isn't drop off. I have to walk him in and out.) and what to bring the first day. There will be an open house later this month to discuss curriculum. I am going to be positive about our situation, because I really feel like God has his hand on Carter, I know we are disappointed, but I know there is a reason. I just hope that he wasn't trying to tell me to homeschool......