From The Past: August 9, 2004

This morning marked the first day of school here in Clark County. Like usual, it was a nightmare at Ashley’s school. Here’s why: instead of having an open house before the first day, they moronically waited until two weeks after school started. That way, the children have no clue where their classroom is and they’ve never met their teacher on the first day. It wouldn’t be such a bad situation except for the fact that the administrators let the parents pile up in the hall until the clock strikes 7:30. At this time there is a stampede to the classrooms. It’s not a situation that I would leave my daughter in alone to fend for herself.

One year in order to make things better (or so we thought) we took Ashley to the school during the summer, found out who her teacher was, introduced her, and showed her the way to her classroom. However, all of these preventive measures failed when on the first day of school we found out that her teacher had been changed.

Back to today: The children have to be at school between 7:30 and 7:40. I was told upon entering the building that we would be able to take our children to their classrooms at 7:30. I accepted this fact although I think it is totally asinine to make people wait and pile up in the hallway. Why can’t the teachers be there early just on the first day so that we can go ahead to the classroom? Anyway, the clock struck 7:30 and the principal started saying that only kindergarten students could go to their classrooms and that we were going to have to go in order of grades. I said, “It’s 7:30.” She says to me, “Well, we’re letting the kindergarten go first and we’re doing the best that we can.” She wasn’t nice at all! I explained to her that I had a high school child waiting in the car and that he had to be at school at 8:00. Five minutes later, we were all allowed to enter the wing to the classrooms. Ashley’s room was at the very end of the hall (you figured that, huh!). I very quickly met her teacher and walked briskly out to the car to find Andrew in a panic. He knew that we would have to wait in a long line of traffic at the high school and he was right. I got him there with about two minutes to spare. I am relieved to be at home now. I can only hope that tomorrow will go much smoother.