Like millions of other Americans, I unexpectedly became unemployed almost two years ago. Before I lost my job, I had a life plan in which that job was a central piece. Suddenly, I was forced to build a new life. Looking back at the end of this year, I realize that I have made many choices that have greatly improved my life and will benefit those that I love. I also realize that my life is filled with amazing people. Each of those people has brought me a unique joy and perspective on living that has enriched my life and made me a better person. I have also learned more about myself. I have a much better understanding of my priorities and my expectations for myself.
I have also been forced to seek an explanation for the reason that the loss of my job had such an impact on me. “It was just a job,” people tell me. “Let it go and move on,” say others that love me. “Why can’t I just turn my head and let the cards fall where they may?” I have asked myself more often than you can imagine.
There are moments in your life that are pivotal – those moments which demand that you question the underpinnings of your world. The rest of the world may not see the significance but, sometimes as they are occurring and sometimes in retrospect, you know that the event is life-altering. I had one of those life-altering moments with my middle daughter in 2000.
Then, she started school. She was tested before she started school and was placed in first grade rather than kindergarten based on her performance on the testing. She quickly became a target for bullying. Her brother, who was a year ahead of her in school, had also been bullied. He had responded to the bullying by becoming aggressive. She was not an aggressor and could not develop a method of coping with the abuse. She was never really comfortable in her own skin after the bullying began, yet she continued to try. She spent most of fifth grade being bullied and beaten up by one of the more popular girls and the girl’s popular friends. At fifth grade graduation, the girl decided that she wanted to make peace. My daughter hugged her. That might say all that needs to be said about the amazing young lady that was my daughter. My most frequent comment about my daughter was “she has such a big heart!
I did everything that I could, in light of our very difficult financial situation, to ensure that my daughter would have a fresh start with a new group of kids for middle school. While I did get her into a school outside our area, the problems didn’t end. Around the time she entered sixth grade, her thyroid failed. She began to gain weight rapidly and, once again, became a target for the bullies. After failing sixth grade once, my sensitive, targeted daughter changed schools again to repeat sixth grade. In her second round of sixth grade, my loving, smiling child disappeared. In her place was an angry, resentful, passive-aggressive kid who excelled at making her family members miserable. I can’t tell you the number of days that I felt a sense of dread and foreboding in my heart when it was time to leave work and go home to her.
Around the holidays, I took this child that I couldn’t recognize out to breakfast with my parents and her siblings. She was horrid and the meal was a nightmare for all of us. When we got into the car, I had no compassion left in my soul. I screamed at her, “What is wrong with you?!” I received no answer so, in my least therapeutic tone, I screamed again, “What the hell is wrong with you?!” The answer I received would change my life forever. All I heard were deep, heart-wrenching sobs interspersed with words made unintelligible by the inconsolable pain that was pouring from my poor baby’s soul. She told me a story of her life at school which combined outright cruelty with constant low-level torture. At the end of the devastating tale, I was a mother bear, ready to tear apart those who had inflicted such unholy pain on my sweet, sensitive, happy daughter. Yet there was my baby begging me not to do anything. “Just leave it alone, Mom, it will only get worse if they know I told.”
She was eventually forced into anger management counseling at the school after two students reported that she had made a threatening comment. The principal searched my daughter’s backpack and found no weapons or contraband. Nevertheless, she had to attend anger management counseling, unlike the bullies that had tortured her daily.
Had my daughter not been angry about what was being done to her, I would have been worried about her. When I asked the woman doing anger management counseling for my daughter how she would react if a colleague of hers were to make denigrating comments upon her arrival every morning, her response was that she would file a complaint. I asked how my daughter could do that. The counselor’s response indicated that bullying was different when it occurred among teens and that teens needed to learn how to handle it. While I couldn’t agree more that children need to be taught how to address a situation in which they are being bullied, I never believed that immersion education in bullying could possibly be beneficial. I needed to find a different educational solution for my daughter.
My father found a newspaper article about a new concept called cyber school. After numerous attempts to learn more about the option of cyber schooling, I finally contacted the Pennsylvania Department of Education and was sent a list of cyber schools operating in Pennsylvania. I enrolled my daughter in a cyber school in 2001. Her school performance and attitude steadily improved once she was removed from the constant bullying. Unfortunately, there were legal problems related to the school which threatened to close it. I finally volunteered to join the Board of Trustees of the school. Unfortunately, the difficulties had gone too far and the school was closed at the end of that year. While we eventually found another cyber school for my daughter, following a year of homeschooling, she had suffered too many negative experiences related to school and was not able to rally again. All these years later, the damage caused by the bullying and the loss of a positive learning environment can be seen in her behavior.
When it was time for my younger daughter to start school, she too was able to start a year early. I simply could not force her into the public school system which had been so damaging to my older children. Her father and I paid for her to attend a local parochial school. She was academically and socially successful in first and second grade. However, in third grade a new student enrolled who began to pick on my daughter and tease her. The teasing began because my daughter ate yogurt rather than sandwiches for lunch. My daughter also had very eclectic interests, even as a young child. These interests, such as a love for jazz music, made her a target for the new child when my daughter contributed to a talent show by singing a jazz song. Differences were not embraced. Despite being in the same class, the young bully was two years older than my daughter because my daughter started school a year early and her young tormentor had been held back a year. Other children began to follow the new girl’s lead and my daughter began to feel like an outcast. She didn’t want to go to school anymore because of the teasing. As she began to withdraw, she was less accepted socially. As I watched her love of learning disappear, I decided that I would not allow her to suffer the same fate as her siblings. She would not live through abuse that was indirectly supported by school staff. She would not be advised by school personnel to conform her behavior to the wishes of the bullies. She would not have to go through anger management counseling with a woman who felt that children should tolerate bullying but the counselor should not. I transferred my younger daughter to a cyber school in fourth grade. She flourished.
In 2004, I learned from friends that a new cyber school was opening. Although I had a full-time job, I began working for the new cyber in a bookkeeping capacity in the evenings. About six months later, I left my full-time job and went to work for the cyber school full-time as the Executive Assistant. I had enjoyed other jobs in the past, but I loved my job at the cyber school. The positive experiences of my daughters in cyber school made me feel certain that cyber school was a necessary option for students. The constant striving of the staff at the cyber school to improve the learning experience for our students was uplifting and invigorating.
However, as with all things, it was not long before the ambitions of some of the employees began to overshadow the needs of the students. Cyber education was a new field. Some of the people who got involved were dedicated educators and parents who saw the potential of the new educational format. Others were people who saw a new arena in which they could build little kingdoms for themselves. The school in which I worked was primarily composed of the dedicated. There were those who had other goals but the staff worked together to present the problems to the Board of Trustees of the school and, although the process took time, those people were removed. Unfortunately, throughout the school’s existence, new empire builders would arrive from time to time and the staff was forced to defend the school against the ambitions of the new arrivals.
During my employment, I changed. I became a more vocal advocate for cyber education, and the students that needed it as an option, than I had ever been before. I recognized that, in order to remain beneficial to the students, it was necessary to keep the interests of the students in the forefront. Adult power struggles and adult desires for authority and control could not taint the purpose of the school. I became a different person during that period. It had not been in my nature to speak up when I saw a problem. I learned that I did not have a choice. If I wanted change, I had to be an active part of the change. It was not a pleasant lesson.
I had many responsibilities in the non-academic areas of the school which put me in a rather unique position to understand the effects of decisions on a variety of areas and the interactions between those areas. Despite the numerous responsibilities, I was not in a position of authority at the school. Therefore, although I was often one of the first to become aware of a problem, I could do nothing to change it without the support of the administration. Over the years, there were periods during which the various administrations and Boards of Trustees were open to discussion and periods when that was not the case. I remained outspoken because I felt it was my duty. At times, that made my job very uncomfortable and, on different occasions, put my job at risk.
Despite the intermittent periods of unpleasantness and job insecurity, over those years I had the privilege of working with a group of people who were amazingly committed to a vision of education that was student focused. While we certainly did not always agree about how best to address our responsibilities in order to offer the greatest benefit to the students, the staff behaved professionally and resolved differences of opinion through discussion. During periods when the administration and Board were abiding by the collaborative philosophy of the charter, the school was innovative and fostered a love of learning through example. When things were difficult, the staff simply worked harder and devoted more time and energy to ensuring that student needs were met. We had a common purpose, a common commitment, and the sense that we were making a difference. These shared beliefs made the low pay and periods of bad leadership palatable. We all knew that the bad periods would end and that we were on the right road.
In January 2010, a new administration came into power. It took only a few weeks before a Board meeting was held and my position was reorganized out of the school. Despite the protections offered to employees by the Sunshine Act, I was given no notice that my position was being considered for termination and had no opportunity to request that discussion of the matter occur in public. Discussion occurred behind closed doors and it was clear that the decision was made well before the public vote occurred. I was terminated immediately following the Board meeting. I was offered a reasonable severance package which included the condition that I could not criticize or disparage the school for a period of five years. I had reached another of those momentous occasions in my life.
In the brief period that the administration had been in power, I had heard and seen actions which I knew would be detrimental to the school. I had listened to comments by the new administrator that indicated a vast change in philosophy. There were statements which expressed the intention to get rid of students who were not successful in an effort to improve test scores. There were statements which denigrated special education students. There were statements expressing the intent to end collaborative management of the school. Most frightening were the statements which supported a philosophy of excessive spending. All of these philosophies were antithetical to the mission and vision of the school.
This time, I knew that I was at a life-altering crossroad. I could accept the severance package, which I desperately needed as the sole support for a family, or I could stand by the principle that each of us must be an active participant in change. If I were to accept the severance package, I would not be able to continue to advocate for the school that I loved. I made a choice. I would not be purchased or bullied by ambitious administrators. I would continue to be an active part of the positive changes that good, honest cyber schools could make in the lives of students. I declined the severance package.
The concern among the staff about the practices of the new administration grew rapidly. Several staff members decided that it was time to contact a union. They recognized that there was little that could be done to protect the school if the staff were fired. I was so moved by the courage that these women displayed. In a terrible economy when jobs were disappearing regularly, these women cared more about protecting the school they loved than about protecting themselves. The administration managed to bully the remainder of the staff into submission by terminating those that played an active role in attempting to establish a union.
Once having rid the school of those who would stand against the corruption of the founding philosophy, the administration continued with its expansive spending. Staffing has ballooned. Salaries have exploded. Consulting firms and outsourcing of responsibilities abound. There is unequal provision of educational services based on geographic location. Yet the result does not appear to be an improvement in student success. In fact, watching from the outside, it does not appear that there is much discussion about student success. The focus appears to be on empire building and stroking the egos and supporting the ambitions of the adults.
As recently as November 2011, I was contacted about the blog by the attorney for the school. In his letter he indicated that I made slanderous and/or false allegations and demanded that I remove them within 72 hours or there would be further legal action. Two of the three items that the attorney claimed were slanderous and/or false were derived directly from documents supplied by the school in Right to Know requests. I altered the blog entry in question to show that the attorney, on behalf of the school, disputed the information in the blog. I requested that the attorney instruct me about acquiring corrected information from the school. I have not heard from the attorney on this matter but will be glad to “correct” my blog as soon as the school issues documents which do not contain slanderous and/or false information for me to use. The third item was simply a repetition of information posted on a public website about the genealogy of one of the school employees. I even included the link to the public website in my blog. I did suggest that the employee might want to contact the source of the information on the public website to have it corrected when I addressed the attorney’s letter.
When I took the time to consider why I am unwilling and unable to “just let it go” and to view the privilege of working at that cyber school as “just a job” I took all of these things into consideration. I realized that, as a result of enrolling my youngest daughter in a cyber school, she has grown to be one of the most amazing teenagers I have ever had the privilege to know. She is now fifteen years old, on the honor roll, and will be ready to graduate at the end of eleventh grade at the age of sixteen. She is happy, confident, well-adjusted, socially graceful, extremely funny, warm and caring, and she loves learning. Her interests remain diverse. She is exploring her options for college with great excitement. I have experienced none of the family dissent that many of my friends have experienced with their teens. My daughter had the opportunity to enter into an educational format which allowed her to excel without fear of bullying. If cyber schools are permitted to become nothing more than fiefdom-building opportunities for adults, then other students will be deprived of the opportunities which were afforded my daughter. It is absolutely necessary that the cyber schools that have become less than student focused be weeded out and that the administrations and Boards of those schools be replaced with committed, caring, courageous innovators who measure their success by the successes of the students.
As I examined the idea of “letting it go” a little further, I came to another realization. The administrators are the same bullies that my children were exposed to in their educational careers.
My children were too young, and their education was too important, to force them to stay in a school in which they were bullied. I am not too young. Standing and facing these bullies will not destroy my opportunities. I will stand and face the bullies for the former co-workers that I so admire, for the school to which I am devoted, and for my children who I love with all my heart.
