'Must Read' Post Script

Yesterday I shared a letter from a parent at a CPS school who lamented the three budget cuts this year along with staff reduction. To say that class sizes and the children are hurt by these cuts is an understatement. It is wrong on so very many levels and is bound to continue to harm both teaching and learning going forward. As I thought about the letter, parent and her child I was struck by the fact that no where in the correspondence was any reference made to an allegation of poor performance by the staff and students. On the contrary, in recent years the school has made great progress. And that's what you get - slashing of your budget?! It is any wonder there is trouble in many urban areas? The decimation of budgets, some low property values, individuals not wanting to enter the field of teaching, blight, unemployment, cuts in school personnel, growing class sizes and other harmful actions perpetuated at the expense of teachers and students, is it any wonder that urban neighborhood schools are struggling to survive? Dick

Volunteerism

I am trying to decide how I feel about mandated volunteerism for high school. Many schools, including the one my children go to, require you to perform so many community service hours prior to graduation. Tis the season to make sure those are completed, my friends son has been directing traffic at 5K's, cleaning up and doing other items as fast as he can now in order to graduate.

So I visited dictionary.com the first definition of volunteer: a person who voluntarily offers himself or herself for a service or undertaking. This doesn't appear to apply to this mandated form of public service. For the students must do this or they do not receive their diploma.

Definition #2. a person who performs a service willingly and without pay. Ok, maybe, they are performing without pay, but willingly? Not sure.

For the most part the students don't appear upset about the requirement and overall I think it is extremely beneficial for them and society to be a part of something that benefits someone else. I just think we need to change the name:)

As the 5th Anniversary Approaches...

I have been watching bits of coverage here and there about the 5th anniversary of Katrina. I don't know how to express my feelings, other than to write a bit. I watch the videos and listen to the coverage and I am overcome with amazement at how much people can endure. I am reading the book Nine Lives by Dan Baum, I am almost done with it and it truly gives you such a sense of what the heart of NOLA is. What people endure and how they come out of it is truly amazing.

When we delivered supplies to Chicago Public Schools a week ago, I was amazed at the appreciation and the total heart that the staff at the schools put into each day. I wished I could have that same spirit. When faced with some of the worst parts of our society, racism, child abuse, and more, these wonderful educators continue on to make the best of what the day brings and to provide a smiling face to children who so desperately need it.

I am enduring my own struggles as we all do, and I wonder if I can be as strong as those who have survived so much, my own problems seem so minor when you look at what so many have had to overcome or succumb to. Yet none of us should diminish our own lives, we should take a bit of the courage we seen in others and step in and let it wash over us. As we move forward as New Orleans is, we should be able to harness the drive and motivation that has brought us all to where we are today.

Another successful delivery:)

I finally have a chance to sit down and blog a bit about our trip to NOLA this year. I find the work we do exhilarating and yet I entered this trip with apprehension. Unsure as to whether this would be our last trip to deliver supplies to NOLA or not. After all the hurdles we had to overcome to make a successful trip, I was not sure what we would encounter once we were down there. I, of course, was pleasantly surprised, the volunteers were all wonderful and ventured out happily into the hot New Orleans sun.

Me, my mom, my sister Danielle, my daughter Ashley, my cousin Katie, friends Dick, Len, Bruce and his wife Marilyn, and John, all left at 5AM on Sunday in 2 SUV's. We took turns driving and sleeping:) We made good time down to NOLA, making stops only for gas and food. Once in NOLA, we checked into the Wyndham Whitney and then ventured out for dinner at nearby Landry's (a frequent SCC stop). While out, my cousin April arrived from Houston. Once we all were back at the hotel, we planned for the next day and then were off to a full nights sleep. I had been diagnosed with bronchitis on Friday so had some great medicine to put me into a peaceful slumber:)

Monday morning at 6:30 we were all up and ready to go! We had a quick breakfast on the run and then headed for the rental truck place and the warehouse. The supplies we loaded up in Mokena, were waiting to be unloaded when the warehouse opened in NOLA. The crew at the warehouse was great and they quickly unloaded the semi and loaded up the 3 rental trucks. While we were there our dear friend Kate from RHINO (www.scapc.org/RHINO) joined us for the day.

And we were off, by 10AM we were delivering supplies and the sun was hot and heavy as the temperature was over 90! We delivered to 7 schools, we had a caravan of two SUV's and 2 rental trucks. At each stop, we had paperwork to be signed by the school and then we have to figure out where to unload the trucks. Sometimes we could set items inside the door, sometimes we had to go up several flights of stairs, and sometimes down stairs. Each school received 1 or 2 pallets of brand new school supplies. One school even received over $3,000 in musical instruments.

One or two people got into the back of the trucks and then the rest of us carried the items, that they unloaded off the pallets, into the school. At several schools the principals came out to thank us and tell us how long the supplies lasted in the past and how appreciative they were of our efforts. One school even had several teachers who came out to thank us. Truly rewarding to provide these supplies to both students and teachers. After we returned one rental truck and picked up another we all headed back to shower and relax. Dick provided us with a wonderful dinner at Arnaud's followed by Beignet's at cafe Du Monde, before retiring for the night.

On Tuesday we delivered to 8 more schools although we did not rise quite so early. The heat was even more brutal today and thus the volunteers were very motivated to get it unloaded quickly so that we were finished by 2PM and missed the most brutal heat of the day. We had one unfortunate mishap with the roof of a truck and a tree that put a damper on things, but all in all a successful day. We lunched at our favorite NOLA Pizza place, Reginelli's on Magazine and had dinner at Nacho Mama's next door to that.

Wednesday morning the alarm went off at 4:30 and by 5:10 we were on our way home. The days in NOLA fly by and I never have enough energy to truly enjoy all the city has to offer. Yet each visit offers something special, this trip allowed me to share the importance of volunteering with my mom, my sister, my daughter and my cousins. Something that I find as rewarding as the school supplies themselves. So, as I close out this evening, I reflect on this trip and look forward to the next. I wonder how delivering supplies to Chicago Public Schools will compare, will I find the fulfillment I have in NOLA each year? Will I be able to bring the feelings of accomplishment and yet need to do more back to my classroom? Will I be able to inspire others to accomplish the desperately needed work in out public schools?

Stay tuned...

Loading Tomorrow!

Last minute problems are arising one by one, but we are working through them as we speak. If anyone knows a forklift driver I could use one. Two volunteers are unable to come but we continue plugging along and I know that we will be successful in loading all these supplies for the children of NOLA. See you tomorrow!

Getting ready..

This year has certainly been the most trying when it comes to getting things ready for school children. But as we are getting closer and closer, things are coming together. We have a great group of volunteers coming out to help us load up the supplies as well as a group of 13 helping us deliver them. As I was having breakfast this morning, I was talking to my friend Eleanor, she offered the insight that the best part about it all is that perhaps we are inspiring the next generation to think of those around them and how they can help.

That's it, isn't it... I hope I am setting the right example for my children, but also for my students in the classroom, and the neighbors children and so on. The amazing thing about all of this, is that given the opportunity, people from all walks of life, come forward and bond together to make a greater difference.

Readying for NOLA 2010

Today we are in the midst of getting ready to head to NOLA for our 5th and final delivery of school supplies there. It is with great sadness that we have determined that this must be our last trip down. The amount of barriers that have come up over the last few months have been quite trying, especially for a nonprofit this small.

Our past suppliers of notebooks, folders, binders, pencils, pens, etc., will no longer do bulk orders. Which lead us to investigate a variety of other sources, we looked into having notepaper printed and bound ourselves, ordering from Poland and having it shipped over, ordering in bulk from warehouse stores, ordering in bulk from office supply stores, you name it I think we looked into it. In the end, no one could match the prices for these items at the local discount store, so we have been forced to recruit volunteers to go to the store in their areas and purchase $200-$300 dollars worth of supplies at a time, then we pick them up or they drop them off and we organize and box it.

While this doesn't sound to bad, realize that the volunteers are going out to purchase 15,000 folders and 10,000 notebooks, not a small feat I assure you. In addition we are buying pens, pencils, and binders. Our second set back this year was the cost of rental trucks. Typically we have sent 1-2 semi's down with supplies ahead of us going down. the semi's unload at the NOLA Public Schools warehouse. Then we follow down in a variety of vehicles, rent trucks in NOLA in addition to a few we drive down with additional supplies.

This year the issue with this is two-fold. First, NOLA schools no longer have a warehouse for us to unload the semi's into, so we were going to drive down several rental trucks loaded with the supplies for each school already. This is when the second issue arose, in the past we were charged about $600 for the rental trucks to drive down there, this year the lowest price they would give the non-profit for 3 trucks is $1300 a piece! In addition to having to pay for the gas for all of these!

So as you can see the efforts this year have been enormous to overcome all of these obstacles. We are now looking at hiring a semi to haul the items down, driving cars down, renting trucks in NOLA, unloading from the semi in a parking lot into the rental trucks for delivery (not sure how that will work with no loading dock or forklift!).

While I continue to believe s very much in the work we are doing and the benefits to the children of New Orleans. It is so disheartening to run into this many problems and then you get an email from a principal at one of the Public Schools you have helped in the past, and she asks if you will help provide supplies for her students, now that they have just informed her (mid-July) that they are closing her public school and repositioning her at a charter school.

Disheartening to say the least! As I get ready to do residency verification and registration for my children in the upcoming weeks, I am so grateful to have the educational opportunities for them, but it brings back around the question of educational equality for everyone and why can we not achieve this?