The Great Divide

I have commented on this before but it still boggles my mind: a freeway divides the district, and schools within a single district are so different. Monday I was covering for a nurse on "the other side of the tracks" and before I even walked inside, differences were glaringly obvious. The school looks freshly painted and separate "staff" parking spaces (one of her schools even has a "nurse" parking space) allows for some breathing room away from the mothers in their vans. Walking inside, I was forced into the office because of some high-tech automatic gate - no intruders will be walking around their schools. Inside the comfortably warm nurse's office, there's space to put my purse down - what a concept! There's a small ice machine for making ice bags, separate from the small refrigerator to hold medications. Cabinets open and close with ease, the small flatscreen monitor leaves plenty of desk space, and there is a separate phone number just for the nurse's office. A handicap accessible bathroom, complete with a ventilation system, is connected to the office. The main office itself appeared similar: overwhelmingly spacious, bright, and with clean windows. As per protocol, I texted the mother of the diabetic student I was helping to inform her of his blood sugar and insulin dose; she charts it daily.

Meanwhile, back on the other side of the freeway... One school in particular has such a poorly functioning heating system that it is very nearly inside whatever temperature it is outside, because the office is open to the hallway, which have single pane windows and no heating. This means I have learned to study the weather forecast carefully, wearing long underwear in the winter, and being prepared to sweat in the heat. There's a bathroom connected to my office, as mandated by law, that is so small that parents have to leave the door open if their child needs help changing out of muddy clothes. There is zero ventilation in the bathroom, which not only allows for whatever aroma to remain as long as possible, but also allows the slightest noise to escape into my ears; zero ventilation is also true of another one of my office's bathrooms, which continues to release the odor of dead animals. We can barely keep some, and sometimes many, of the kids clothed and fed, much less learning - no wonder they are such low performing schools.

I don't understand why some schools earned the money to have such spacious offices while others literally have paint peeling off the walls, but I suppose that's why I work in the school rather than the district office.