Week's End and a Look Back...

It's Friday evening. We spent dinner and some time afterwards with some great friends; now the boys are in bed and Ryan is playing some Lego Batman on the Wii and I am trying to edit a few more pictures from a recent senior session.

But my mind, it's a-wanderin'.
This week was anything but boring. It was emotional, it was hard, it was frustrating... It was one of those weeks that left you wondering which way was up, who's on first, and praying "Come Lord Jesus." Personally, I let myself get far too wrapped up in local events and my flesh wants to be hurt and angry when my spirit says "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding."
Due to projected budget shortfalls and cutbacks in federal and state funding, our local school district (the one I taught for prior to my current job as "Mom") has made the tough decision to eliminate 550 teaching positions. Due to around 200 or so folks stepping forward and saying that they were retiring or resigning for other reasons, about 350 teachers were laid off from their jobs this week. A person from HR came into their classroom, often with a class full of kids present, asked to speak with them in the hall, told them that they didn't have a job next year, and then they went back into the classroom and were expected to finish the day and finish the year.

How the district handled it was wrong. Plain and simple. Budget cutbacks...necessary. Options weighed...surely. Decisions agonized over...undoubtedly. But to fire your teachers -- many of whom are stellar educators and loved by students -- in this manner just plain stinks. It hurts. It hurts the staff and it hurts the students.

As a result, many schools had students who staged walkouts in protest to their teachers being let go. Nothing will change the decisions that have been made, but students are acting out their frustrations (and their parents frustrations) by doing what they've been taught in exercising their First Amendment rights. (I'm not in favor of them doing this, by the way. However, for those who truly are protesting this and are doing it to support their teachers, I am a bit touched. There were a ton of kids who jumped on the bandwagon just to get out of class, though, and that's never a good thing to me.)

There are no easy answers or solutions to any of this but to pray that whatever the Lord has intended to come out of this as "good" that it would be evident very soon. I pray for the single parents who lost their jobs who now have to figure out how to provide for their families come August -- when no other school districts in the entire area are hiring, because many are in the same position. I pray for the students to find more constructive ways to handle their frustrations. I pray for all those who lost their jobs to be able to have the grace to finish the last seven weeks of the school year strong. I pray for the school board, legislators, administrators, and anyone else who has a hand or say in education funding to have the wisdom and knowledge of how to move forward in a positive manner and never let this happen again.
With all this talk of school budgets and teacher layoffs, why do I have pictures of airplanes and Space Shuttles? You may have heard on the news this week that the soon-to-be retired Orbiters have been given or assigned new homes. Houston -- the home of the Johnson Space Center, many astronauts, NASA, the control center when shuttles are in orbit -- you know, "Houston, we have a problem..." -- was not chosen for a final destination for one of these. We got two used seats instead. This seriously irked my even-keeled husband, who still would love to be an astronaut. Seriously.

I've read various theories on why other locations (ahem, New York City?) were chosen instead of Houston, but it still feels like a huge sucker-punch to the gut. Tears came to my eyes as I read my former roommate Lindsey's Facebook status the day it was announced. Lindsey is an engineer employed by NASA who has worked on the shuttle program since we graduated. Her husband is also an engineer with NASA who works in their robotics department. Both of them knew some of the astronauts who died in the Columbia as it re-entered the atmosphere in 2003. They know their families. They know a whole community of people who would love to have a relic of something this area has worked so hard on, for so long. Sad. Just sad.

Ryan and I toured the Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum (part of the Smithsonian) while we were in D.C. last month. It was one of the locations chosen for a retired orbiter (the one you see in the photo above will be transferred to the Intrepid Museum in NYC. Grr.). They have done a fabulous job of displaying so many wonderful aircraft, and I have no doubt they will take care of their newest addition. I just wish that Houston was given the same opportunity -- for the sake of history.