A Blob of Yolk on the End of my Nose

Back in August, I mentioned that we were sending the Offspring to a charter school, a move that we were slightly uneasy about, yet convinced it was the right move at the time.

I still think it was the right call to make, although the leaders of the school, as well as the state's Charter School Commission, have made me rethink and regret that call approximately seventy-nine billion, three hundred and four times. Don't ask, I don't want to talk about it. Actually, that's less than true--I'd like to talk about it, but I don't know what to say. And, honestly, more and more I think anyone who has talked/is talking about it is misinformed, lying or fooling themselves (or a combination thereof).

As calamitous as last year was on the macro level, it was also very beneficial on the personal level for the members of this family. Enough so, that we're trying (at least) a couple of different charter school programs this year. Sadly, we (were forced to) choose this a little late, so we had to get the kids on various waiting lists for various appealing charter schools. Frodo got into a school, that for our purposes today we'll call Decision Charter School. The others have been enrolled in a virtual charter school until they can get into a brick and mortar place (not necessarily Decision Charter, tho' that'd be nice). We'd gotten Frodo registered back in June, making the frightening realization that he's a junior higher now--making his parents old.

Then the other day, I got a voice mail telling me that an opening had been made in the seventh grade and we had twenty-four hours to respond before they'd offer the spot to the next student on the list. WHAT?!?! That ain't right. So, despite the fact that I was out of breath because I was about halfway through with my days' exercises, I returned the call immediately.

"Um, we registered Frodo back in June. So, I'm a bit confused about this." I panted at the secretary, who I hoped wasn't going to report an obscene call to the authorities.

"Oh? Well, I don't see him on my list."

"That's odd, because--"

"But there are two lists, so maybe he just didn't get put on my list by accident."

I tried to ignore the troubling ramifications of this kind of problem and the reflexive fear that we'd found ourselves another #$*!ed up school, "Well, a couple of weeks after we turned in all the paperwork, I spoke to the administrator there and she said everything was perfect, no problems at all." Because I've been made very paranoid about the organizational abilities of anyone related to a charter school, and this phone call wasn't helping me at all.

"Well I'm sure there is no problem and we'll get this glitch cleared right up."

Yeah, right, I didn't say. Rather I said, "Now is this going to cause any kind of problem for the electives we were trying to get? Is he going to be at the bottom of the pecking order for those now?" I was preparing to rip these people a new one if that was the case.

"We don't have electives in seventh grade."

...

"What?"

We don't offer electives until high school."

Then what had he, his mother and I talked and talked about for days? Of all the stupid, useless paperwork items...oh no... "Er, what school did you say this was again?"

"Destiny Charter School," replied the secretary now thinking I was a stupid pervert. [not the real name]

"Oh, er, I'm sorry, I thought you'd said Decision Charter. In that case we won't be needing that opening."

"He's going to Decision next year?"

"Yes, again, very sorry." I said, realizing that there's a really strong chance that his siblings' applications were milliseconds away from being "misplaced."

I'm sure there's a lesson to be learned from all this, but I have no idea what it is.