Halloween Scrooge

I am a Halloween Scrooge.  I do not like the holiday or the costumes or the associated festivities.  I am a rational, educated man.

I do not believe that on this night the boundary between the living and the dead is somehow merged.  (I do not believe there is such a boundary in the first place.)  I do not believe that we need to mask ourselves to remain safe from ghosts.  I do not believe that a day of support for fear mongering is a good thing.  I do not believe that simply awarding children candy is a good thing.  I do not believe awarding children candy because they threaten me with some sort of prank is a good thing.  ‘Tis the night of institutionalized begging by masked small humanoids accompanied by blackmail and veiled threats.  And the payoff to avoid the threat is candy, not a substance I promote giving to children.  Why would I promote such an annual event?  Trick or Treat?  How dare you!

Is this a religious or a secular holiday?  It began as a religious holiday of sorts but now is pretty much all secular unless one is a tithing member of a coven or a deacon in a satanic church.  25% of all the candy sold in the US will be sold in preparation for this event.  I look at the revenue generated by cards, decorations, costumes, etc., and I see another commercialization of what may have been an interesting event 2,000 ago but is no longer needed today.  I look at other secular holidays and rejoice.  Thanksgiving is a wonderful notion.  The 4^th of July is a wonderful celebration.  Even Mother’s Day is highly appropriate despite the commercial overtones and the perk for restaurants.  I see no such benefit in Halloween.

I get it that the Celts believed all this malarkey 2,000 years ago.  I get it that October 31 is celebrated as the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter.  Though of Scottish origins, I am not Celtic.  Any other day of the year a masked person at my door threatening me with pranks if I do not give them something would result in a 9-1-1 call.  Not tonight.  We have institutionalized this bribery.

I am an educator.  I would love to have as much parent involvement in our schools as we will have on our streets tonight.  Entire families will walk miles to reinforce all these negative behaviors in children, and the same parents will not show up at the schools when we invite them in to share all the good things we are doing for their kids.  What is up with that?

Yes, I am a Halloween Scrooge.  I shall not be masking up and harassing my neighbors.  I do not believe dead people are floating around tonight.  In my profession the harvest is in late May or early June, so I have none of that to celebrate.  Are we sure we want to celebrate and reinforce the practices of Halloween?  I do not think so.

And yet, I am all talk.  I will not scare the children at my door.  I will give them candy.  I am both a Scrooge and a Halloweenie.  I will succumb to the peer pressure and promote bad habits in children.  Just this one night.  I should be ashamed.

Be safe out there tonight.  Masked blackmailers and beggars are afoot.

Bridge on the Potomac

As I watch the government shutdown continue I remain amazed at the dedication and commitment of the small minds in the Tea Party.  Because I hold our American heritage so sacred I cannot abide using the term Tea Party for this group as it implies they are grounded historically in the fundamentals of American democracy.  Nothing could be further from the truth and they have clearly not understood the lessons of the original Boston Tea Party.  I shall refer to them as TP because I believe that is more fitting in terms of their function and purpose.

I am reminded of Lt. Colonel Nicholson, refusing to work manual labor because he is an officer, he stands at attention in the sun all day, he suffers solitary confinement, and he demands that the bridge be built his way.  And, he gets his way and builds a magnificent bridge.  At the last minute he realizes he has helped the enemy.  He lost sight of the big picture to achieve his own ends, ends that he was driven to accomplish.  Ends that demanded the sacrifice of others.  Ends that were inappropriate.  He built the Bridge on the River Kwai for his Japanese captors.  He did for them what they could not do for themselves and aided the enemy.

I understand that there are folks who oppose the Affordable Care Act.  I understand that they would like to vote to un-fund it, abolish it, whatever.  I believe they have the right to that opinion.  I do not believe that linking that one law to the long term financial reputation of the United States, linking that one law to the operation of the entire United States government, and linking that one law to the thousands who are now unemployed is any more moral or noble than Lt. Colonel Nicholson’s insistence that if he is going to build a bridge for the Japanese it is going to be a damn good bridge.  Nicholson missed the point.  The TP is missing the point.  The TP is in fact accomplishing the aims of Al Qaeda from within.  Is it worth it? 

Raise the debt ceiling.  Get our government running again.  If you have a beef with a law on the books, then introduce other legislation and attempt to get it passed.  Do you not see that if the only way you can eliminate the Affordable Care Act is by blackmailing the nation with a government shutdown, then eliminating the Affordable Care Act is not a popular move?  Do not undermine the government of the United States of America because you are near sighted and stubborn and convicted.  Do not be a Lt. Colonel Nicholson. 

This is not a religious debate; this is a political and economic debate.  In all rational democracies there is an understood assumption that compromise is the only way to move forward and attempt to improve the quality of life for all.  It is also understood that the majority vote becomes the law of the land.  Why do you insist on an irrational approach to democracy?  Why do you insist on assuming a position that is not reflective of the majority?  Do you believe in Democracy?  Or, is it more demagoguery?  Were you a foreign power we would either declare war on you or try you for terrorism for your efforts to dismantle our government.  I do not understand why you cannot see that.

TP:  Do not build a bridge on the river Potomac insisting on your way at the expense of our nation.  Please adhere to democratic principles.  We should not have to remind elected representatives in the United States of America of these basic truths.

Home Schooled

Parents of home schooled children have long baffled me.  I am a professional educator.  I have 130 graduate hours past the master’s degree.  I am certified to teach the entire realm of social sciences.  My wife is an elementary teacher and an expert in the instruction of math.  She has almost 40 years experience.  Neither of us perceives ourselves qualified to home school our children.  We do not know enough to provide them the depth of the curricular experience demanded today.

And, as parents, we were paying our taxes for public education anyway.  Why would we pay for a service then refuse it?  Why would we believe that somehow keeping our kids at home would provide a better learning environment and better learning opportunities than they would have at public school? 

Yes, parents of home schooled children have long baffled me.  I am disturbed to learn that there are about 1.5 million home schooled children in this country, and that number is growing about 7% each year.  How can this be?  How can we be going backwards?  In the earliest of days of our history and throughout our western expansion, most kids were home schooled.  The evolution of the full time teacher and the one room school house was perceived to be an improvement over that effort.  The development of the professionally trained teacher was perceived to be an improvement.  Full-fledged schooling with multiple teacher specialists, fine arts, psycho-kinetic arts, big yellow buses, cafeterias serving food, clinics dispensing health and safety and counselors providing emotional growth and succor are surely an advancement over the pioneer home schooled and the one-room school house.  And yet, the numbers of home schooled kids are growing.  How can this be?

Because I so totally disagreed with the notion I assumed the worst about such parents.  I assumed they home schooled to avoid the racial and economic diversity found in public schools.  I assumed they home schooled because the tenets of their religious beliefs were in conflict with what we scientifically know to be true.  I assumed they home schooled out of a sense of protectionism for their children that nurtured co-dependency rather than independence.  I assumed they home schooled out of a sense of arrogance, a sense that as an individual parent they perceived they could provide this opportunity better than our hallowed public institution.  I believe none of the above reasons are moral reasons and therefore viewed the home school movement as an immoral movement devoted to nurturing and developing young people who remain dependent and cocooned.  Worse, remain ignorant.  It made as much sense to me as home medical treatment when no one in the house was a medical doctor.  Would a parent perform an appendectomy on their own child?  Surgeons know better than to do that.  What in the world is going on?

Then I met a lady at church.  I liked her.  I knew her family. I held her in high regard.  Then I learned she home schools her kids.  She does not have horns.

And then I looked at the data.  Turns out that home schooled students perform overall in the 77^th percentile academically.  They are in the 79^th and 73^rd percentiles respectively in reading and math.  That is really pretty good.  That means they are outperforming 79% of their peers on reading tests and 73% of their peers on math tests.  How could we fault such outcomes even if the assumptions regarding the parental decision-making to shelter and teach at home are spurious?  

Then I got it.  70% of the parents who home school their children have 4 or fewer kids at home.  The results of home schooled children on standardized tests is less a measure of the knowledge base and skills held by the parental teacher and more a confirmation of what we have long known to be the impact of class-size on learning and the impact of a student-centered approach to learning.  And that makes sense to me.

In our elementary schools we literally train our students to synchronize their bladders and stomachs.  A child may not pee nor eat until it is time for all their peers to pee or eat.  We do that because the number of kids so dramatically outnumbers the number of adults, and our facilities are not capable of handling random peeing or random breakfasts or lunches or snacks.  School administrators must organize those events so that every kid gets to pee and gets to eat regardless of their needs.  Home schooled kids have no such organization.  It is hard to imagine a parent denying their own child the opportunity to go to the bathroom once the child reports the need to do so.  The facilities can handle it.  They are not likely to get into mischief between where they learn and the bathroom.  It is totally safe to let them transverse the distance in their houses sans escort.  The same is true of hunger.  The parent knows what the kid ate and when.  If hours later the kids reports hunger issues the parent most likely concurs and provides nourishment.  Not in public schools.  In schools, they must wait their turn regardless of the degree of stomach emptiness.  Likewise, for the home schooled child if the light is too bright it can be dimmed, if too dimmed it can be enhanced.  If the chair is uncomfortable the kid can move.  If the kid is hot the thermostat will be adjusted.  The climate and the facilities are totally under the control of the parent/teacher. 

 

Not true in public schools where central chiller systems are controlled remotely by computer and everyone is assigned a temperature of median comfort, not too hot, not too cold, and if anyone, teacher or kid, is uncomfortable with the median they must dress appropriately.  The temperature is governed by the masses not the individual.  The food is delivered on a schedule not based on the individual’s needs or tastes.  Even the trip to the bathroom is standardized.  None of this is true for the home schooled kid.  For the home schooled kid even transportation is in the comfort of a personal vehicle where the driver can be creative and independent, not a large uncomfortable bus that must follow a given route on schedule.  They and their parents are masters of their instructional climate and their learning environment. 

And how about actual instruction?  Regardless of the parent’s degree of expertise in the curriculum and/or training in lesson planning, classroom management, blood borne pathogens, suicide prevention, teen dating issues, use of technology, review of resources, differentiated instruction, inclusion, IEP’s, state standards and preparation strategies for state mandated high stakes tests, the parents somehow teach their kids.  I believe they do so because virtually none of the required knowledge imposed on public school teachers would make any sense if they had a class of 3 and the class was totally homogenous.  Further, the parent can instantly detect when any of their progeny encounters a problem and move quickly to facilitate learning.  There may even be some long term benefits to teaching kids total problem solving and analysis once the curriculum dramatically exceeds the parents understanding.  Hard to picture a parent equipped to teach calculus, British literature, chemistry and economics, not to mention Spanish or French.  If the kid can learn to teach him or herself then they are miles ahead of others.

Why miles ahead?  Schools are structured around the shotgun approach.  Teachers are given 20 to 40 kids and told to teach them a certain subject where the content most likely has been prescribed by a government mandate.  The notion of teaching such a large group takes a back seat to crowd control.  The ability of a teacher to instantly detect and correct learning obstacles is virtually impossible with those numbers.  The ability of a teacher to customize the learning for each and every student in such a classroom is literally impossible.  Kids must learn to conform in order to learn.  They must learn to be quiet, keeps their hands to themselves, avoid distracting others, and never to ask questions that are to be covered 10 minutes from now because the learning must be regimented like the bladder.  It must be regimented because we are so outnumbered.  We dispense learning in a regimented manner all too quickly, before the bell rings, before the bathroom break, before lunch and before the pep rally.  Teachers do not have the ability to decide they need a little more time on this concept, or perhaps a little less.  There is little time for individualization of the learning for each kid.  Should a kid fall behind in learning, we develop tiers and kids’ schedules are modified to accommodate another round of instruction in a smaller setting.  Guess what?  That tends to work.

I see the home school movement in a very different light now.  I see it as daily confirmation for the need to achieve a minimal class size and individualized instruction.  Most of the parental complaints I receive as an administrator have to do with our standardization requirements.  Those would disappear if we could get class size to about 4 to 1, even 5 to 1.  On the other hand, most of the complaints from our constituency outside the school are that we make exceptions.  The public believes if we have a rule it should be universally enforced regardless of circumstance.  Catch 22.

Why don’t we do that?  Why don’t we give each teacher control of his or her thermostat and the bell schedule?  Why don’t we allow kids to go to the bathroom when they want or eat when they want?  Because we cannot afford to do so.  Our AC system is the cheapest money can buy and controllable so we do not consume too much electricity.  Our cadre of teachers tends to be the fewest the law allows triggering the largest class size the law allows.  (We could have more teachers if we paid them less, or vice-versa.)  Our bathrooms and cafeterias are not equipped to handle the trickle in approach, no pun intended.  We are not designed to be a customized service agency.  We are a mass producer.  We are such because of funding.  We have about 50 teachers on an elementary campus of 800 kids.  That is about 16 kids per teacher which is really pretty good for a public school.  (In reality, the numbers are much higher after we take out the specialists, PE, etc.)  Were we to provide a teacher for every 4 kids we would need 200 teachers.  We do not have a facility large enough or designed in a way that could accommodate 200 teachers.  We would not need classrooms but a series of little conference rooms each equipped with all the technology we now demand per classroom.  Our cost of increasing the number of teachers by a factor of 4 would be astronomical.  The entire district budget would have to be 4 times larger to accomplish this up and down the grade levels.  We cannot afford it, nor can the tax payer.

The parent of a home schooled child can.  He or she does not need facility modification.  The salary is non-existent, the class size at the micro level.  In this light, if the home schooled kids did not do better than the public school kids there would be a serious problem.

The problem of course, is that few of our most challenging students come from homes with parents equipped at all to provide home school instruction.  We have many students with disabilities, many students whose home life is chaotic, many students of poverty.  If we are serious about educating all kids we must seek to provide a learning climate more like home schooled kids enjoy.  We must seek to provide a class size teacher/pupil ratio that resembles what home schooled kids enjoy.  We must seek to provide a kid-centered school, a school aware of and sensitive to the individual kid’s learning and needs.  I firmly believe if we did so we would totally outperform home schooled students.  And private schooled students and charter schooled students.

It just would cost too much.  America has somehow been sold on the notion that when it comes to public schools the solution for improvement is not to throw money at it.  I disagree.  We have never tested that theory, or if we have it has been using the drop in the bucket method.  My system has a $12 million dollar budget.  Some years we get an additional $100,000 and that is nice, but it does not allow substantial overhaul of our current system.  Give me revenue of $48 million and I could really make a difference.

I still do not support home schooling.  I still do not think that home schooling is the solution to our challenge of educating all kids.  I still do not think we should encourage parents to home school.  I still worry about what those kids really learn and what enrichment experiences they really have.  But at least I think I know why some parents are so successful with home schooled kids.  And I still value my new friend who home schools her kids.  In fact, I owe her for making me take another look.

I thought all this out at home.  Guess you know what that makes me.

However, I much prefer to be in a public school.  An administrator in public school whose heart is in the right place can move the system toward an individualized kid orientation and away from ever more standardized rule enforcement and regimentation.  In fact, an administrator whose heart is in the right place can do the same for teachers.  As we can make class size lower, we should.  As we can make the learning experience more customized to the individual kid, we should.  As we can empower teachers to be more in control and responsible for their learning environment, we should.  We have not done so.  Yet.

To pee or not to pee, that is the question.  Time we started arguing for the resources to provide the appropriate learning environment to always answer that question with, “It is up to you.”

Deflated to Elated

Frankly, I have been having a hard time with my new status.  A little over a week into sitting at home while just down the street another sits in the chair I called mine for over 14 years is hard.  Non-structured days, days feeling abandoned, rejected and non-essential have been taking a toll on my mood and outlook.  I hear the buses run every morning and afternoon and know they are no longer my responsibility, nor anything and everything else in the local school system.  Letting go and moving on is tough.

I have tackled an array of household chores that never seemed to get accomplished while I was punching the clock. We have a giant Sago Palm in the back yard, the product of a gift from a Board Member years ago when we first moved in this house.  Over time it grew, put out puppies and eventually achieved a diameter of over 15 feet and a height over 7 feet.  It was a monster begging to be trimmed.  I tackled the Sago this week.  Hours and hours of snaking around the base on hands and knees individually cutting the prickly branches, pruning the monster back.  Finally trimmed, I was left with a large pile of cuttings that had to be hauled to the dump.  That was a mission for Friday.

 

I began loading all the clippings from the major reshape effort on the Sago in the back of my truck.  Took hours. I had to wear a long-sleeved shirt to protect me from the branches and once all the trimmings had been picked up and loaded I was very hot and tired.   I headed to the dump to dispose of the prickly little branches and it  took another hour to unload the truck.  As I was pulling away from the large brush pile at the dump I heard a thump/thump under the truck.  I assumed I had picked up a branch and was dragging it, but no.  I had a flat tire.  So flat the tire was coming off the wheel.  It was 4:45 p.m.

I was very hot, very tired.  I called AAA to come change the tire for me; why else pay for such a service?  They said someone could be there in an hour and a half.  I was a good 1/2 mile from the office at the dump, way out on the back  40.  I sat.  It began to dawn on me that the dump may be closing.  I did not know what time.  I did not know if I could still get out, or if the wrecker could get in.  I sat.  With a heavy sigh, I got out of the truck and retrieved the jack, tire tool, etc. from behind the back seat.  I went to the front left tire and began to try to loosen the lug nuts.  I had the tires balanced and rotated about a month ago and the mechanic used an air wrench to put the nuts on.  Jeez they were tight.  The lug wrench was one of those angular ones not the good X-shaped ones.  I struggled.  I grunted.  I strained, and the nuts would not bust free. I stood on the wrench and they would not bust free.  Now mixed with my fear of being caged in the dump all night I was angry at the lug nuts and the guy who tightened them.  I was exhausted, near tears.  This felt like one more kick in the teeth while I was down.

A white pick up truck arrived out of nowhere.  I did not see it coming, though had I stood and looked I could see for miles in every direction.  It was the young man who worked in the office at the dump.  He told me as he was leaving he happened to look back and saw my truck sitting out here alone.  Had I pulled on the other side of the brush pile he would not have seen me.  He said the dump was closed, the gate locked and I would be stuck.  I told him I was working on changing the flat, but couldn't break the lug nuts loose.  He looked at me for a second, then said, OK, I'll give you a hand. I felt a huge surge of relief.

Rudy, the young man, was about 21, over 6' tall and probably weighed over 250 pounds.  He took his own lug nut wrench out of his truck, the good X-shaped kind, and quickly broke the nuts free.  He pulled out his portable floor jack, positioned it under the truck and easily jacked up the front end of my truck.  The flat came off and I threw it in the recently emptied bed of my truck.  We cranked down the spare from under the bed of the truck, he rolled it over, slid it on, tightened the nuts, and let the truck back down.  He was now like me, hot and sweaty and dirty from lying on the dirt in the junk yard.  I thanked him, shook his hand, gave him a $20 and hopped in my truck.  He smiled and said thank you very much.  We exchanged names.  I followed him to the front gate, he got out and unlocked it, swung it open, and I passed through to head home.  It was almost 6:00.  Thank goodness for Rudy or I would have had a long, lonely night sitting in the dump, or I would have had about a 15 mile walk home down narrow little country roads in the dark.  Neither prospect was appealing.

Fate or simple happenstance, the flat reminded me that there are really good people in this world. I do not know Rudy and may never see him again.  He arrived just when I needed help the most.  A heavy angel, perhaps.  A simple flat tire at that place and at that time could have been truly traumatic.  I could not have driven on the flat.  Thank goodness for cell phones.  20 years ago I would have been really stuck.  I awake grateful for all our technology but more for the good people out there, who regardless of their own wants, needs, and schedule will stop to help another human in need.  I forget that I as wallow in the pain triggered by not so good people who are willing to hurt others to accomplish their own wants and wishes.

My tire like my mood was deflated.  The arrival of help and support when I needed it the most brought a new kind of tears to my eyes.  I was grateful.  I was elated.

Thanks, Rudy.

In the Blink of One Eye

I logged on the Edna ISD website yesterday and learned I am gone.  I do not exist.  Under "Superintendent" it now lists the interim and, more painful for me, my blog there is gone.  I posted one last post to the staff on Tuesday, October 1, and doubt that many got to see it.  I am gone in the blink of an eye.  In the Blink of one eye. Therefore,  I re-post here just so that it will not be lost:

My Out Post

The Board meets October 1 (tonight) to name an interim superintendent and I check out once he is named.  This is my last day.  You know me.  I could not leave without one more post.

What a wonderful 14+ years I have had in Edna.  Friends made here will last a lifetime and I do not worry about losing you though our roles and the basis of our relationship may change.  I have always said I am a guy named Bob with a job to do.  I did my job.  I remain Bob.

I have learned much about our community since my arrival here.  We are not perfect.  I have learned that for many it is safer to avoid conflict and communicate sideways.  I prefer face-to-face to Facebook, and yet I have learned of issues and feelings and concerns from Facebook.  Sometimes I have never learned, never heard, and never understood the issues.  In those cases no one came to sit with me and openly share what they were thinking and feeling, preferring to play “I’ve got a secret”.  I will assure you of this:  In 14 years no one, absolutely no one has ever gotten in trouble with me, lost their job, etc., for stepping forward and speaking the truth.  There has been no retaliation from my office; there has been only fear of retaliation.  It is only fear that keeps us from sharing.  Be bold.  Be a professional.  Leaders lead best when they know how folks are thinking and feeling.  If you have a problem with a person, tell that person.  Posting it elsewhere, sharing in HEB or never saying a word will not resolve the problem.  It will make things worse.

I have learned we need to teach driving lessons to many of our parents.  If you park on the side of FM 1822 and walk across the road and jump the ditch to pick up your child rather than simply waiting in the parent line you are not only spending more time than need be, you are placing yourself and your child at great risk.  If you stop to double park in front of the junior high gym when dropping off your child you are clogging a major thoroughfare and forcing everyone to wait.  Be reasonable.  Be sensitive.  Be safe.  Be patient. (OK, end of pet peeves.)

But mostly I have learned what a wonderful community this is.  I have never seen folks rally to help their fellows in time of need, whether it is from disease or fire or whatever, folks in Edna respond.  We chip in.  We help out.  I have never lived in a community so full of good Samaritans.  I have never lived in a community that is so open.  Everyone waives.  We do not judge folks by the pigment or ink in their skin.  I love that about living here.  I will leave here having friends across the racial, ethnic, income, religious and gender lines and I am proud of it.  We are all precious and flawed.  We are all human beings and merit each other’s support and openness.

Our school system and our staff are absolutely top notch.  It is so hard to explain to non-educators that we are in the future business and what we do today is mindful of 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years from now, because that is when we will really learn if kids have learned.  Staff who are most unpopular for a behavior today may in fact be better preparing kids for an uncertain future than others.  We educators are by nature collaborators.  We know that if we find something that helps kids and we do not share what we have found we are harming all the other kids. So we share, we plan, we collaborate.  We do not want to compete because that hurts kids.  I would swap staff with any so-called “Exemplary” school system and I know our staff would yield even higher outcomes in the Exemplary district while the imported teachers teaching our kids will lower our outcomes tremendously.  We teach.  We teach everyone.  We teach anyone.  Of that I am very proud.

Yes, I am proud of our facilities and am proud of our financial stability and status, and I have been proud of the leadership stability and improvement.  Our mission is to ensure a quality education for all and I believe every day we are all working hard to achieve that mission.  I encourage you to keep doing so.

We are professional educators in a very unique time frame in our nation.  We are asked to address every issue in our society from childhood obesity, to dental exams, to physical fitness, to providing after school activities and Friday night entertainment.  And teach to standards set outside the realm of public education.  We are asked to do so with more and more technology but with no additional money.  (I always thought it funny that when schools add technology we do not reduce the number of employees, we increase it.)  We are asked to do so needing more and more staff but with no additional money.  We are to be all things to all people, solve all the problems and be content with the funding we have.  That is ludicrous, but that is where we are.

We also function in a time when elected officials perceive that they know more about educating kids than we do.  They know more about curriculum, standards, accountability, testing, instructional programs, and professional evaluation than we do.  They do not; they just perceive that they do.  I believe we have been handed such officials by voters who do not understand the issues.  We must be professional.  We must teach our parents, our voters, our board members our legislators what professional education is and is not, what works and what does not.  And in my book that means be aware of our professional practice beyond the walls of our classrooms, buildings, and school districts.  If not, we will be subject to more and more ridiculous and private sector-based mandates that hurt teachers and kids and do not promote our primary mission.  Worse, we are asked to do so by billionaires who want to experiment in our schools, and they want us to experiment while they take away or divert more money to new experiments.  Public schools must survive.  The next generation depends on us.  The answers lie with us, not around a board table, or in Austin or in Washington.  We must be aware and vigilant.  We must be professional.

I will step down from my soap box.  I will take one more sentimental journey up and down all our new halls on my last afternoon.  I will stop, catch your eye and say goodbye.  You will have a new leader soon.  I wish him or her and you the very best.  Kids in Edna deserve that.

I deeply thank the 27,000+ souls who have read this blog.  I will continue to write and post on one-eyedbob.blogspot.com and invite you to join me there.  But this is my last post on this blog.  This is and has been my out post.

Goodbye and God Bless

Bob