Michelle's Family

I have to admit, I'm not looking forward to school starting this year.  For one thing, this year I'm homeschooling Joshua.  I'm hoping I will not get any "lip" about us homeschooling our former foster child, now adopted, son.  I'd hate to start the year with a lawyer and battle.  I guess I'm working myself up for a battle because I've read quite a few stories last month of similar situations and the schools trying to force the parents to put their special needs child back in the public school system.  In the words of my southern vernacular, "It ain't happening". 

Oh well.  Ronnie is having fits with his workplace.  I'm not sure he'll have a job when he leaves work today.  He's going to talk to the director, who has said that he believes the people are "conspiring" together because on their annual company evaluations so many of them put negatives this year.  He was furious.  Because the documents are supposed to be "anonymous" they don't put their names on them...but as an added assurance, most who listed "negatives" typed their papers so they could not be identified by handwriting.  The director has told them now that this was "unethical" so for now on they would do only face to face evaluations.  Of course this will prevent people from being honest because the people they have a problem with will be doing the interviews.  He also told them that since this is a "conspiracy", if one person will come forward and admit who the other people were that "conspired" together, he'd spare their job...implying that the rest will be fired. 

The sad thing is, this man is absolutely adored in the community.  He is your typical politician type fellow who rubs elbows with his country club friends.  He's on all sorts of  "boards" here in the community....yet he does nothing.  If the newspaper is taking a picture, he's there.  If not, he doesn't even show up most of the time.  He used to be the school superintendent....and he's made it clear that his "job" is just to see that other's do theirs....not to actually do any work.  He says his job is fund raising (but in the 8 years my husband has been there, he's never once obtained any funds through his fund raising efforts for the company).  And his job is to go to meetings...but in the 8 years that he's been their he's never once been to any of the state meetings that help teach and train the center for how to be in compliance or meet state standards.  Nope.  He only shows up if it makes him look good, and there's not PR opportunity's in doing behind the scenes work.  One time the newspaper was going to take a picture of some award a client was getting, so he left the other building (he keeps his office in an entirely different building...no reason for it other than he just doesn't want other's to see his 3 hour lunches that he takes with his wife at the companies expense) to show up for that .  He made sure that he was the one giving the client the award...but he didn't even know the client's name!  If he ever has to present any information to the Board, he always has to get the asst. Director (who does all the work), to write out all the information, gather the facts, tell him who the people are etc, and even write his speeches because he doesn't have a clue as to what's going on. 

Just talked to my husband and he said he's already had the meeting with the Director.  The Director said he had every intention of firing him because he'd already heard that Ronnie helped another one with her evaluation (hence, his conspiracy theory).  Ronnie did help her.  The woman didn't know how to open the document or type in the program, (she's not very computer literate) and she asked Ronnie for help with that.  Ronnie helped her, but they didn't plan what they were going to say together.  There's the big "Conspiracy".  Just thinking about all this junk....and my stomach is hurting again.  Sigh.  It's not a good time, economy wise, for Ronnie to find a new job....and it almost certainly means a pay cut if he does.  What's the alternative though? 

This summer is entirely too short.  We've been doing school most of the summer, so we didn't have much of a break.  Our start date is August 24th.  The public school kids start back August 7th, this Friday.  So we'll have a couple of weeks longer than them....of course, they have more breaks than us usually also.  I have no scheduled "teacher's work days".  I'm not planning a Winter break in addition to the two weeks of Christmas break they already get.