Sunday, May. 01, 2005
Calm before the storm of the week, posted at 9:56 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com The big story of this week at school for me is the field trip on Friday that I'm heading up, a sojourn to see Romeo and Juliet for the whole ninth grade class. That's over 400 kids. We're bussing them across the city line to a local community college. It's is an incredibly big task that I've managed to make extremely difficult for myself.The main stress is money. I thought I planned the trip well. I charged based on the numbers that my colleagues had given me (a little over $4/kid for the busses). The show is $5, so all the kids are paying $10 to go. I figured with the <$1.00 per kid, I'd be able to afford to bring chaperones, to bring the girl in the wheelchair (her life costs an extra c-note), and to help kids who are in need. Unfortunately, the bus company I was ordered to use is charging twice as much as any other bus company in the city, and now we're over a grand short.
Last week, in calling back to confirm the cost, the bus company informed me that he is charging me $300 a bus rather than $150, which puts my total for the trip at $5300 rather than $4000 that I was planning. I'm $1300 short with four days to go. I'm unsure about what will happen, but it adds stress to an already stressful field trip plan. I've had to collect literally thousands of dollars myself in the last two weeks and deposit hundreds of $1 and $5 bills into my bank account (because there's nowhere safe at school to keep the $) for safekeeping, then will be paying the bus company and the theater company cash when we arrive.
I'm hoping my department head will have a bright idea tomorrow about how to fix this problem, because the week is already stressing me out and it hasn't begun. I also hope that bright idea doesn't mean collecting $3 more dollars from the kids, because I couldn't handle it. I have three baseball games (Mon-Wed-Fri), including two of them away and the big rival game on Friday, the same day as the field trip. I have had to rally up ten colleagues to accompany me on the trip and a coach for a day on Friday.
I've also decided to skip parent/teacher conferences. They were scheduled last Thursday, and I cancelled practice and cleared my schedule to go. They cancelled them on Wednesday night without notice (and not even in writing - we had to hear via PA announcements) and rescheduled them for this Thursday. Well, this is an incredibly busy week for me, and, damn it, I've wanted to attend the First Thursday concert with Jess Klein literally for months. I'm going to say I have prior engagements and leave it at that. Since I'm going to put in at least ninety hours of work into school life this week, I don't care if they have a problem with it. In addition, I'm supremely upset with administration at this moment, so I'm okay with it.