Juvin Chronicles » Back to School

It’s been a week now since the kids went back to school. Not enough time to catch up with the flurry of activity that accompanies this time of year, but enough time to get a few thoughts together.

The budget crackdown in CA is really hurting our schools. It was kind of a given that education would be a big target since it accounts for roughly half of the general fund expenditures, but the reality on the ground really sucks. Ana’s kindergarten teacher was doing reading recovery the last few years to help ensure that the lowest-achieving first graders could catch up before it was too late. This year funding was cut so she’s back in the classroom. Quite a few teachers are in different grades from last year, some of them covering for those who were laid off. Class sizes are up school-wide. Our school’s Community Club, which was already responsible for donating much of the school’s computer equipment, chairs for the multi-purpose room, and emergency supplies over just the last few years, is asking for even more donations this year to cover further cutbacks.

Angie gets ready to go back to school

Angie is back in daycare after two idyllic months home with mama. She’s very advanced for her age, having started her Terrible Twos(tm) weeks ago. Her preferred method of ending a sip of any liquid is to hurl the container as far as she can. It turns out that those covered sippy cups either leak horribly when upside-down and/or their lids come off entirely when dropped. We’ve tried a few different kinds but for the moment we’re stuck sitting next to her and playing shortstop to avoid having to clean up massive milk puddles.

Her latest tricks are saying “uh uh” and nodding for yes and “unh” and shaking her head for no. She’s a climber, though thankfully not quite as much as her big sister. She can get on and off the sofa safely, but tends to avoid scary things like standing on tables, arms of chairs, etc. We’ve caught her with little Lego parts in her mouth once or twice but to be fair, I think she was hungry at the time.

See Daddy? I can do it myself.

Julie goes back to work tomorrow. She probably has 1.5 months of work to catch up on that built up during her 2 months ‘off’ during the summer. We’ve spent the last few days before she heads back pondering things like: How can we streamline bathing the kids? Do we really care if the cars aren’t washed until next July? and When exactly are we going to fit in grocery trips?

This promises to be an extra busy year as we’re both headed back to school as well. I’m looking forward to my MPA classes, as well as the interdisciplinary coursework I’ll be taking in Education. We spent yesterday getting an old desk back down from the rafters in the garage and assembling it in the study for Alex. We now have full-time work space for everybody but Angie, and I’m building a second computer for the kids. It’s not going to be practical having them share one any more as Alex is being expected to do more online research and type up his papers.