A Dubious Proposition

An email arrived in my school inbox this afternoon from a member of our school's wellness committee (don't even ask me what they do) that read, from the best my memory can recall, as follows:

"Please respond Yes to this email if you favor the following proposition. If you are not in favor, DO NOT respond to this email. Would you favor a school year calendar for 2008-2009 that does not allow for a spring break?"

My first response to this was, "Wha' ?" No spring break. Somebody on the wellness committee must have been unwell. Somebody had to be smoking crack, sniffing glue, hovering too closely to the whiteboard. This had to be a joke.

My next response was, "Who in the hell is gonna be in favor of that?"

But it's real. Someone is proposing doing away with spring break. But nobody gives out the details. If we eliminate that break, does school end a week earlier, or do we get "compensated" for five more work days? Why is this being proposed? What data leads someone to believe that eliminating that break would be (as all things in edumucation must be) in the best interest of the churlen?

Then, I realized that I would be somewhere else in 2008-2009 and decided not to give it another thought. Until I wrote about it just now.

Funny but sad: the girls basketball team played their crosstown rivals last night at home, but the gym roof was leaking so much icemelt onto the gym floor that the game had to be suspended with the home team down by one with just under seven minutes left in the third quarter. Thousands of worked up spectators were sent home with no resolution. What a terrible state some of our facilities are in. They plan on resuming the game on Monday, once again, in our gym. Gee, I hope it stops leaking by then.