I'm posting here again and am probably going to change the name of the blog, but wanted to get started and at least make an effort this time to jot down as many of the varied happenings in my world as a DC Charter School ELL Coordinator.
This past summer was an interesting exercise in how one gets what they want from a current employer.  After writing up a proposal requested by the upper administration of the school at the end of the year, for what my ideas were on a new role in the department, the proposal went nowhere.  I dealt with the stress initially by grinding my teeth and complaining, but it gradually began to take its toll and I slipped into a booze fueled introspection universe that really did me no good at all.  In the midst of it all I went down to Florida and drank and snorted coke for about 48 hours staright before crashing into my motel room bed for a 20 hour nap.
When I awoke I realized I had a conference call with the head of schools to discuss my postion ideas, so after 10 cigs and a debate about whether I should drink before hand I had the chat and worked out the details of the job.  The reality is that the only reason this all came to fruition was that another school had recruited me to work with them when they heard I was unhappy with my current situation.  It proved to me that although I got what I want out of CAPCS, they were prepared to shit on me and let me do the work of 3 people before the threat of me leaving was out there.  The good is they want me around. The bad is they are fucking mismanaged idiots.
So that said, I'm back at CAPCS in a coordinators role.  My director is still the same emotional wreck as she has been for years, oscillating between bitchy self righteousness and a crying I'm the victim mindset.  We have just completed two weeks of meetings which have been slightly productive but also a sad reminder of what happens when you hire your fucking family to run your business and put them in skill positions that they have no training in.  From what I understand the operations director, who happens to be the founders step-son, has botched the budget so badly that we won't be funded as a school until we can prove we can handle the money.  And also the director of assessment, who has no experience in assessment and doesn't really understand numbers and how they work, overshot the enrollment projections (or probably more to the truth told the founder what he wanted to hear) and now we have hundereds of books too many.  For many schools this sounds like a good thing, but for us, with our limited finances, it means we fire the maintenance staff then offer them jobs at half the wage with no benefits.  And start firing teachers and aids.  Through all of this, the assessment director is still fine and operations director is in Hawaii for a couple of weeks. T