OK, so the story goes that in order to be on the National Honor Society (in?) at our high school, you must satisfy a list of requirements. Among them is the community service hour quota. A student must have completed at least 100 volunteer hours by the time that they make their application. Which is not too bad, considering you do have about four years in which to do this, right? Hmm. But what if nobody tells you about the requirement before you're a senior? I don't even know how I found out about it, but I did. The guidance counselors do not tell the freshmen about it. But I have been on Megan to get to work on these hours.
In order to try to knock off a chunk of the hours in one summer, Megan applied to work at the school district's extended school year program. She had to fill in an application, write an essay on why she wanted to do this, and another paragraph summarizing her extracurricular activities. Then she had to get a letter from a teacher or guidance counselor, recommending her. She did all of this, and I dropped it off before the due date. (This was the first time I tried to get in touch with them regarding the exchange student)
The volunteers were supposed to be notified by today. She has heard nothing. Two of her friends received letters with assignments. She has not even recieved a letter turning her down, or thanking her for making the effort to apply. One of the girls who is doing it did it last year. The other, like Megan, was applying for the first time, but her mother is active in the PFA at the middle school, and probably at the high school as well. Anyway, it's demoralizing, as there is no apparent reason for her to have been passed over; not to mention that it's just plain inconsiderate of them not to even contact her with a letter of rejection.
So we're having to scramble to figure out what she should do this summer instead. Honestly, if not for the insult of it, it is not such a bad thing. She was going to have to miss a couple of the five weeks of the school for trips, and then she was going to have to work MWF from 9-1 until the middle of August, including the week when we will have C. If she doesn't have to do this, she can volunteer at the church's vacation bible school, and get 15 hours while having fun. So she will do that as soon as I get the mail tomorrow and confirm she has in fact not been assigned to a class. Then we will be free to entertain C as a whole family for the entire week. It's too bad she can't get some hours for that. I am going to email them and ask if they have opportunities for her to help. There's a picnic for the kids in July and maybe she can help out at that.
We also tallied up her church volunteer hours and found she has already gotten 26 just from her acolyting, then another 25 from the 30 hour famine (she skipped some!) and she will do some community swim lesson volunteering on Friday at the Y. Then add on Vacation Bible School for another 15, and she should be at 75 or so hours by the end of this year, with two years still to go. So we should be able to get the 100 without their help, but it still makes me so mad.
But the one thing that really burned me about this is that, in typical Middletown fashion, the Superintendent's newsletter says that students who missed too much school this year to advance a grade (more than 16 days unexcused) may make this up by volunteering the hours in the extended year program. Beautiful, right? Take the kids who skipped too many days of school and put them in the positions instead of the straight A honors kids, who work their butts off the whole year and DON'T go to the drinking and pot smoking parties. I am quickly beginning to think our new administration may be worse then the ones we have had in the past. It's really not a nice thought that this would be their priority. I'm seriously considering getting Brian out of the system after 8th grade and sending him to one of the Catholic high schools. I wish he would show some interest in the county schools, but he insists he does not. This should be the topic of many blogs-to-come once the new school year begins.
So that is all for now. In other news, we had a nice day at the track despite some violent storms that passed through. After that we had dinner with the Doll for her birthday and Father's Day. It was a nice day. Finals are this week for Megan, and I am working four half days; three of them will be applied towards by sub certificate, which is good for the next five years. After that (if not before) I suspect I will have had enough!
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