August 12, 2013
This blog has absolutely nothing to do with running. I'm not even going to mention running in this blog, except that I just did....twice and I'm going to make one more comment about it. But it's not about running today. I know I haven't posted in a very long time and that's because I haven't run in a very long time (okay, there, I mentioned running again) and that's due to our move which is partially what I'm going to talk about today.
Several months ago my husband got a new job and we moved from Illinois to Mississippi. Normally I wouldn't mention where I live (I'm kind of protective of my privacy that way) but given the subject of this blog I feel I need to share with the world where I live so people can go into life informed. So, as I was saying several months ago we moved to Mississippi. We kind of like it here. It's quiet in this town and we have a lovely house. The neighborhood has a pool and the kids like that so we're pretty happy in our new life. However, it is time for school and I wanted to take this moment to share with you all what we went through to get our kids registered for school.
About two, maybe three weeks before school started I got online and filled out "paperwork" to enroll my daughter in school. There are several middle schools in our county so I was nervous about signing up online. However, I didn't think the schools were open and I wasn't sure which school my daughter would go to so I started online. There was a link that led to a page that you could put your address in and it would tell you what school your kids would go to. So I clicked there, found the right school and carried on with the "registration" process. After filling out the online forms I felt relieved to have taken care of that and calmly waited to hear back; I assumed I'd be getting a letter in the mail or a phone call or something letting me know the school had received the information about my daughter and letting me know what I needed to do next. Time passed and I didn't hear anything. The school open house occurred the night before school started. My husband went and stated that the kids hadn't been signed up soon enough (he registered his son a week or so later) so they didn't have schedules. We didn't think much of this; we assumed we could go in the next day and sort everything out on the first day. Since we hadn't heard anything from the new school telling us they needed any other information we figured the school had the information they needed and had probably contacted the kids' old school in Illinois, gotten all the records they needed to get the kids started in their new school. Oh, how wrong we were!
The first day of school found us in the counselor's office with several other parents trying to register their children for school. Unfortunately, the school's computer system was down (WHAT? On the first day off school your system is down? SERIOUSLY?) and they couldn't access anyone's information at all. My husband asked if it were better if we just came back later and the lady in the guidance counselor's office said yes, it would be better. We decided to take the kids home and deal with it when things were less hectic.
Side note here: My son had gone to school wearing a pair of athletic shorts and a long t-shirt. He didn't even make it to the gym where the sixth graders were supposed to be meeting before he was stopped and told to tuck in his shirt. Another teacher noticed he was wearing athletic shorts and sent him to the principal's office for violating the dress code. Apparently athletic shorts are not allowed, boys are to tuck in their shirts and they cannot wear pants that do not have belt loops. This is the strictest dress codes the kids have ever experienced and my son was not a happy camper. While I understand the need for a neat and tidy appearance I felt that they could've cut him a little slack on his first day of school in a new school in a new state. It was not a good experience for him to have on his first day at the new school.
Later that day I called the school to see if the school's system was up and running. I got no answer at the school. I left a message. An hour later I still hadn't heard back so I called again. This time I got the office and they informed me the system was up and running then transferred me to the guidance counselor's office. I got no answer there so I left another message. Half an hour to forty-five minutes later I hadn't heard back so we got in the car and headed back to the school. Back in the guidance counselor's office we were told they needed the kids' records from the previous school. I told them what I was told when I tried to get the records before we left: that the previous school didn't "do that" and that the new school would have to call and request the records and they would send them to the new school. WHAT? They are MY KIDS' records. I have a right to have them! Okay, so whatever....just call the school and get them. The guidance counselor's office lady called the old school. Old school says they will send the records but doesn't think they will get to it by the next day (keep in mind, school started that day and the next day was day two of school.) So, the lady in the guidance counselor's office gives me this information and we agree that I will call the school to see if I can't speed things along since the kids were supposed to have started school that day.
Day Two of school. I let the kids sleep in since I've not heard from new school telling me they've received copies of the kids' most important information. I call old school and get the front office. They are sweet as pie to me and agree to fax a copy of my kids' birth certificates, shot records and they latest report cards to the new school and meanwhile will mail the rest. Yay! We are making progress. I call the new school and they connect me to the guidance counselor's office. No one answers so I leave a message again relaying the information and asking to please call me if they need anymore information. My phone is sitting next to me the whole afternoon and I never hear it ring but discover I have missed a call from new school. I assume that this is new school calling to tell me they have received records and the kids are good to go for Day Three of school which will occur on Monday since Day Two was a Friday.
Day Three comes and I decide I better check messages to be sure things are a go before I get kids up and make them get ready for school if they aren't going. Message says new school got records but oh, by the way, did I tell you the shot records have to be on a Mississippi form? You can get those transferred at the health department. I get the kids up because I naively thought that I could run to new school, get shot records, run to the health department, get shot records transferred, run back to new school and viola! kids could go to school today. Silly me!!!! I should've known better. We head to the health department where I am informed at the front desk that it is "appointment day" and those people with appointments will be given priority over me. Normally, I would understand and be content with that, however, I had in my hands two kids' shot records that needed transferred from Illinois Department of Health forms to Mississippi Department of Health forms, a process that should take fifteen minutes tops to do both and I can't understand how they couldn't slip them into a nurse's box, have her do them quickly then move on to other cases that would take more time. Oh, and by the way, there was only one nurse at the Department of Health. And of course, a nurse has to transfer the dates from one form to the other because apparently only a nurse is capable of reading dates and putting them in the right box on the computer. I mean, it does take a degree in medicine to do that, right? Yeah....thought so. So, me and my two sixth graders sit down to patiently wait. We arrived at the Department of Health at a little after 8:00 (my son said it was 8:10 in the morning.) In the car I had told the kids we'd go in, get the forms filled out and they would probably be back and in school by 10:00. I even had planned to get the kids back to school and actually go for a run in the new neighborhood for the first time! Oh, how wrong I was!!!! To make an already long story shorter, we sat in the Department of Health for FIVE HOURS waiting for the nurse (the only nurse who was there) to transfer dates that my kids had received their shots from the form they were faxed to the school on, to a piece of paper that the nurse threw away when she was done then to the computer where she had to enter my son's records twice because she hit the wrong button. The whole process took probably about fifteen minutes even with her doing my son's twice and we were out the door. We waited FIVE HOURS for her to do that....something that I could've done myself in about five minutes at home if given the form. Oh, and while we waited, I called the kids' doctors to see if I could fax the Mississippi form to them if they could fill them out, fax them back and get my kids into school. The doctors were fine with that but when I asked for the forms at the front desk the receptionist said that the school wouldn't accept it because they would know that form came from somewhere that shouldn't have had the Mississippi form. So apparently only a nurse from Mississippi can write the numbers on the sheet of paper because apparently only a nurse with a Mississippi degree/license can do that? So anyway, that was a no go and we had to wait.
We get back to the school (after I rewarded my children for being so patient and well behaved while we waited FIVE HOURS to get the forms filled out with lunch at Wendy's) and we are FINALLY able to begin the process of getting the kids enrolled. Now we just have the problem of my daughter's diabetes to worry about. Guess what! The school doesn't have a full time nurse. So, I'm informed that my daughter is supposed to carry her diabetes kit with her at all times complete with syringes, insulin and all. This I am NOT comfortable with at all but the nurse informs me that she wants my daughter to be able to "have access to her monitor at all times." Something I'm not completely convinced is the truth. While I realize that my daughter is in sixth grade and she is getting to the age where she should be able to administer her insulin herself, I'm not exactly comfortable with her being let go to administer her insulin without supervision which is what she is going to be expected to do at this new school. Furthermore, as I stated before, the nurse didn't seem to be at all bothered with my daughter carrying around syringes where they can be taken by other students. When I expressed my concerns to the nurse she stated "Oh, well, things like that have a way of coming back on the ones who would take them." That very well may be the case but it also puts my daughter in a position where she is vulnerable and might possibly be left without supplies to take care of her illness! Now, some of you may think I'm being an over protective mother and some of you may think that this just means that my daughter needs to be extra vigilant of her supplies and all that may be true, however, school is a place where my daughter should be focusing on learning, not whether someone might take her diabetes bag! I don't think I'm overreacting here. I believe I have a legitimate reason to be concerned. And while I do believe that it is time for my daughter to learn to administer her own medication, I also believe that it should be done with supervision. She is only eleven and while we've known she's had this illness for a year and a half, she is still a child and still needs to be supervised despite her ability to calculate, and draw up her insulin dosage. Even I check her when she does this for herself at home. I believe I'm not overreacting in this situation either.
There are a few things I would like to say here. Now I know this is a running blog and I normally keep mainly keep my opinions to myself - I prefer to blog about running and my thoughts on running in this place but today I'm going to express myself and let it all fly. So, here goes:
I'm a Conservative. I believe in limited government. I believe in the free market and capitalism. I believe that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day but if you teach a man to fish, you feed him for life. I believe there are times when people need help and it is our responsibility to help them. Heck, I've needed help and received it before. However, I do not believe in enabling people and allowing them to remain helpless. I believe people need to work for the things they receive and that the government needs to butt out! I believe government is necessary for some things but one of those things is NOT sharing a joint check book. I believe when government steps in, things get muddled up and become much more complicated than they need to be. I believe this is what has happened in this situation. I believe somewhere along the line government has decided that this is the way things need to be and therefore we need to jump through a bunch of hoops to get kids enrolled into school. Take for instance my experience at the Department of Health. No, let's back up even further, let's take the shot records for example. Who decided that the Illinois Department of Health records were not good enough? Seriously? How silly is it that the only difference between the shot records that I now have the shot records that I had previously is that they now are on the Mississippi Department of Health's letterhead? That's the ONLY difference. Why should the letterhead that my kids' shot records are on prevent my kids from starting school? That makes absolutely no sense to me. Furthermore, why should a nurse have to fill out that form? All that nurse did was type the dates into a computer program, hit a button and print the form out. Why is a nurse more capable of doing that then a receptionist....or me for that matter? Okay, I can hear some of you saying, well, the nurse can check to make sure the records are up to date. Sure, okay, I hear you. But then again, why can't a receptionist or secretary have a list of how often shots are to be given and compare it to the records? Is it really that hard to calculate how often a shot should be given? I don't think so. I can do it and I don't think it requires exceptional thinking skills to do that. So why does it have to be a nurse? Because government says that someone in the medical field has to sign the paper. That's only one example of the ineptitude of government. I could go on about many things but I'm tired and I don't want to think about this situation anymore. All I can say is that the bigger government is, the more complicated things become. Something so simple as enrolling my kids in school became an ordeal which sent me on wild goose chase after wild goose chase, took three days to accomplish and could've been prevented by one simple letter sent to me telling me exactly what I needed and when I needed it but I never got a letter and I was left on my own floundering and running around like a dog chasing its tail! So many simple solutions to things that shouldn't have been problematic to start with! My husband says none of this would happen if we were able to pick and choose the schools we wanted our children to attend. If we had that choice, schools would be forced to provide excellent service and make the process as smooth and painless as possible because they would be competing amongst themselves to attract students. That's what the free market is all about. If your service is the best for the best price, you get the customers. Schools and government services should be the same way. With schools and government services, however, you have no choice. You can't get a driver's license anywhere but the DMV (or as it's called in Mississippi the Department of Public Safety - the DPS.) Think about how that would change your experience at the DMV (or the DPS) if you could! The service would be better, prices would be more competitive and maybe, just maybe the lines would be shorter! This, my friends, is something to think about!
I will end my rant now. I'm glad my children are enrolled in school and able to attend but I must say that my experience has been extremely stressful. Oh, and on Day One when we were in the guidance counselor's office we heard the teachers saying that they "lost" about six or seven afternoon buses! This makes me a bit less than confident about letting my kids ride the bus!
Anyway, I know this is supposed to be a blog about running, not ranting (ha, ha) and I'm not usually one to express my political opinions but I feel strongly about my political opinions and I am upset enough from this experience to post about it.
And while I know this blog had nothing to do with running I will still end it with my regular:
Happy Running!
KEA
P.S. Don't even get me started about my experience at the DPS!!!! I STILL don't have a Mississippi driver's license yet! UGH!!!!
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