Edumacation or is it Education?

Lunch today #winning!

No blogging last night for yours truly, Fort Smathews had to be deconstructed so the living room could be turned back into something livable, and I got to put all the sheets back on the bed.  Unfortunately, thankfully it was quite the hit with Mrs. Sloane as she slept in it Sunday night.  Dad was requested to sleep on the floor outside of the fort.  Did I mention my living room floor is a piece of carpet laid out over hard as concrete tiles?  In other news if anybody reading this is a masseuse please notify me immediately my shoulders and neck are still sore as hell from sleeping on the floor.  I gave up floor sleeping twenty years ago, back then it more than likely wasn’t by choice, but just seemed like the right thing to do at the moment.  Hammy is still bitching about ruining his vacation so I squirted him with water and told him to shut up, Rosy has been reading her Koran and praying Muhammed comes and saves her ass, as she has been recovering from her physical therapy and agility drills Sloane put her through.  She still never spilled the beans who she is working for but Sloane will be back next week to try and flip her.

Hammy on the other hand has been rather resourceful reaching out to his KGB contacts trying to help me out for court.  He offered to bribe a juror but I told him this isn’t criminal court there is no jury.  His next plan was to hack into the Floyd County court system and change the wording but I informed he would have better luck selling bibles to at an atheist convention.  Flummoxed with these temporary setbacks he said “Good Luck dude” and went back to hitting the vodka.  He did leave me with one stroke of advice though after a couple good belts from his bottle.

“Step back and think of all the reasons this is wrong” he belched out.  “You are an international blogging superstar and local social media icon (his words not mine), reach out to the masses, and use your silly little hashtags and @twitterusers” he muttered.  “It’s your only child and I kind of like her now since she has that furry brown Syrian rat to play with, and pay no attention to all the Cheerios I’ve been hurling at her all day I’m alpha rodent in this house!”  He then asked for some milk to make a white Russian and was back on his HotHamsters.com profile looking at some Russian dwarf from Kiev.

So I did reach out to the masses yesterday on one topic, and Skipah is officially renaming June 22 “Hug a teacher day”, even sent paperwork to my state representative Ed Clere and congressman Todd Young to get legislation passed to make this happen in the state of Indiana and nationally.  Why you might ask is Skipah doing this?  Because I had questions about Sloane’s future potential education path and asked a few of my teacher peeps on Facebook yesterday for some guidance.  They came out in full force for me, one teacher who shall not be named gets a lifetime dessert request for all the heavy lifting she did for me.  Plus her daughter is classmates with Sloane, cute as a button, and I’ve known her husband since I was a little fellow myself.  Thanks again friend!

Local readers really know the crisis that is Kentucky and education.  Sure Indiana has some god awful schools, and Kentucky has some good ones.  However in Sloane’s current educational path she is in a private school (no I’m not rich, I’m past poor at this point, I’m about one more bad break away from setting up shop downtown and running my own “Three-card Monte” stand) and frigging excels at school even though she is the youngest in her class.  It’s also one of the best in the state.  Kids routinely test in ninety percentile in reading and math.  Chances are she won’t get to go there next year (but there is a plan in place for that depending on how court goes Thursday), but the public school option in my area is about as good as they come in the public school sector plus I know a teacher there.

The Kentucky option…..PLEASE.  There are three public schools in the area Sloane potentially has to move to.  I called the school board and confirmed they still use “districts” (In Floyd County, Indiana you can go to any school in the county as long as you provide transportation), the school Sloane would have to go to tests at 60.7% in reading 53.9% in math.  To quote the great Mr. Hand “Are all students teachers on dope?”  No I’m not making fun of teachers in this area, it’s rural Kentucky and all joking aside it’s about as modern as a Trapper Keeper in those parts of the world.  You live your whole life waiting until the first time dad says “Son I think it’s time you fire up the tractor” and that’s your life.  What in the hell are they teaching there!  I think tobacco growing and vote Mitch McConnell are the two main topics in school.  (Hell I’m Republican but Mitch rolls over like a puppy dog wanting his belly rubbed!)

These numbers are both off of the Department of Education websites in Indiana and Kentucky.

One last point, what in the hell happened Clarksville School district!  Well I know what happened but it’s tragic. The Clarksville, Indiana school system was one of the most sought after to be a student of.  Parents lied through their teeth (mine included) so they could send their children there.  Complete shift in demographics in Clarksville since I was a kid, but seeing them rank a 1.75 D on the grading scale broke my heart to say the least.

So after looking at that data I became livid, scared, perplexed, miffed, pick an adjective.  The past two days I’ve been as mentally tough as a Jedi, emotionally drained, and for the most part outraged that my daughter could possibly be exposed to this complete breakdown of the education system.  I’ve read and been told “Best interests in the child” is how this proceeding on Thursday goes down.  I’m less than 48 hours away from a short trip up I-65 to now infamous Scott County, Indiana to get this chapter over.  Thursday at 1:00 P.M. EDT time, it’s time to conclude this war!