A few weeks ago, I wrote a story on Carol, a person who has been with a particular school district for over thirty years. In the article, which can be read here, I wrote as to how in the month of November, she puts together Thanksgiving baskets for families who are struggling financially. This year, she was able to give 150 baskets away to those families within the district who couldn’t otherwise afford a Thanksgiving meal. Given the degree of financial struggle in the community for which she provides, though, there were still families that she had to turn away. Her story included the shocking, but not really shocking to any degree if you are familiar with the system, lack of support by many in the upper echelon of administration; from the superintendent to the various assistant superintendents (including the assistants to the assistant superintendents) to the site principal with whom she works, all of whose salaries are predicated on providing her with the most effective means to help the families she sees as members of her community.
And the answer to the cliffhanger of a question regarding appreciation for her dedication, for those who read the story is… no, she *still* hasn’t received an email from one district administrator, nor the school’s site principal, for a job well done—not that she does it because she seeks affirmation from anyone regarding her actions, or that it was ever really a cause for suspense, considering that after 30-plus years of service, she’s never seen one regarding the November basket giveaway, or the December “Adopt a Family” program.
On the tenth of October, about seven weeks before Thanksgiving, she received notification from a local church that they would be able to help another 40 families; those families represented those that weren’t able to get one of the 150 baskets. The families would be able to eat at the church if they chose, or the church would be willing to deliver the dinners to the homes of the families that she put on the list, which she comprised the day she received the email from the church. It would also not cost the district one penny.
The issue, however, that stood in the way of this solution, is that this would be something new to the district. And as is the nature of the bureaucracy of education, in order for her to work with the church to help out these families whose children attend school in the district, she would need administrative approval.
Regardless as to whether or not you work for the education system, I’m sure you can probably figure out what happened next.
The day after Carol received the email, she emailed her boss the list of families to get approval to work with the church for Thanksgiving which, as I mentioned, was still seven weeks away. This gave administration a six-week window to simply read her request, approve the list, and send an email to the church with the names of the families that would be receiving the dinners. This, however, needed to be done sometime before the week of Thanksgiving.
Now, you might think that six weeks is plenty of time to approve and forward an email to the church in order to give them ample notice; considering the time it takes to prepare and deliver that amount of food to that many families, not to mention the communication between them regarding whether they wanted it delivered in the first place—you know, the basic kind of questions that anyone who has had any experience, say, administrating something might think about. And after three reminder emails and a six week, and the obvious help it would provide, she eventually did get approval from her boss… on the afternoon of Wednesday, November 21st—literally the day before Thanksgiving.
Needless to say, that was too little and too late for the 40 families. Carol was still able to help a little, though. That Monday before Thanksgiving, she had a hunch that she wasn’t going to get the approval on time, so she went over the head of administration and contacted the church to see if anything could still be done for the forty families. The church did what they could, and were still able to deliver cooked turkeys to 10 of the 40 families—along with a side of macaroni and cheese; she also supplied 2 frozen turkeys to a couple of other families. The issue, of course, is that there were still 28 families that were not going to receive a meal simply because an administrator waited six-weeks to approve and send a list that could have been done the same day it was received. She did what she could on such short notice with the church to help those 12 more families, but while they say faith moves mountains, there tend to be physical limits to performing actual miracles.
Performing as close to miracles as possible is just part of the job for her, though, apparently: even though she was in quite a bind, she managed to put some last-minute baskets together for the remaining 28 families through a community outreach program with which she has been working for many years. But because of the late notice, the best they could do were baskets of canned goods and Ramen noodles… surely no fishes and loaves, but considering the less than 24-hour turnaround, it seems like it ought to rank somewhere on the scale of beatification.
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Of course, she’d be embarrassed to be compared to a saint, and even though Thanksgiving was 3 weeks ago, she is still very aggravated about what happened, and has emailed her boss (after waiting a week before sending out an email so as to calm down) a couple of times inquiring as to why the approval took so long. They say patience is a virtue, right? She has yet to receive a response. She has also emailed the superintendent about the situation, and also has yet to receive a response from them (or any of the various assistants, assistants-to-assistants, and vice-assistant-assisters-to-assisting-assistants who surely all feasted lavishly on Thanksgiving, while those families they’re supposed to be assisting ate canned beans and Ramen noodles).
And this is the world of education; the people that try to put students first are impeded by those who spend all their time and energy broadcasting their claims to put students first, but yet do very little (if anything at all), when it comes to actually providing for their communities. Of course, when the wait-time for answers about why the wait-time is unreasonable is *itself* unreasonable, it starts to require the kind of patience that would test Monica of Hippo (who, if you google it, is the closest thing to a patron-saint thereof).
Sadly, the truth is, as Carol would be the first to remind us, her story *isn’t* that unique, and the struggles she faces are those that countless district employees—who are actually doing the things that those slogans and banners that adorn websites and press-conferences galore promise—must overcome on a daily basis.