Just a note to let you all know that we're alive. We've had a couple of good months--Steve is back to work, and I've been finding out that taking college chemistry after 4 other science classes is relatively easy. Now to just figure out how to manage going back to school full-time for nursing...
The kids and I have been going nuts over snow days! We've had 4 snows that were 6-plus inches each (one even got to 12 inches!), and lots of "snow showers" in between. The end result is that I don't think we've had one full day of school since before Christmas break. Well, maybe 1 week out of the 8 school has been scheduled. It's been frustrating.
I have been lucky, though. Apparently when the county school district decides it is too snowy for the buses to run, the Community College I attend often decides that it is too snowy for students to drive in. So between my schedule (I only attend school on M, W, & F) and cancellations of my school, I've only had to go to school one day that they were out of school. So there are little mercies among the harder times.
The problem that the older kids (esp. Benjamin) and I are dealing with is that North Carolina has two laws that are causing conflicts with our county's situation. The first is that students have to attend for 180 days a year. The second is that unless the county qualifies for a waiver, those school days HAVE to be scheduled between Aug 25th and June 10th. Our county has not had enough school days in past years to qualify for the waiver, so our school board is pretty stuck. How do you schedule makeup days when you don't have any more days in the calendar you can use?
Well, they solved that dilema by first taking away all holidays and teacher work-days that they could for the rest of the year--including all but two of our Spring Break days. Even after that, we still had days to make up, so they are scheduling us for Saturday make-up days. We had our first day of "Saturday School" this week. It was really strange to get up and get the kids off to school, just like a normal day, and realize that Steve was here and we had the morning to do as we pleased. Okay, okay, we had a full day of errands and things to do, but we did get to go out to eat by ourselves (Carolyn had an early nap at Grandma's).
So we're happy, working hard, and trying to keep up with the changes that constantly happen. On a side note, we found out (either Friday or Saturday) that the State Board of Education has allowed our Superintendent to extend the school year. So maybe we'll get some of our Spring Break back.
Hope to hear from you soon!
-Martha
