Hmm.

The other day at my elementary school I was helping some girls try on donated dresses for their 5th grade promotion (one of those "other duties as assigned"). I asked them if they'd be going to the middle school I work at in August, and one of them replied very hesitantly, "Um...I'm not really sure...My mom said it's pretty rough over there." I didn't have much of a response, and today was a good example of why: first thing this morning the attendance clerk had to go running, literally, after a suspended student, and a policeman came to confiscate a LARGE bag of marijuana and a BB gun that had been brought to campus. In the course of any given day, I patch up at least a few fight related injuries, and watch more Incident Reports be filled out than I thought possible. Still...the elementary school I was at during this conversation is a feeder school into this middle school: if the mom is okay sending her kid to school with the peers she has now, they're going to be the same peers next year...