Archived News Item

Come Quick, Come Quick. We’ve Fallen into a Well.

When you’re young (younger), they teach you how to distinguish the fun from the serious. When to laugh and when to run to Teacher. Like “playing dead” and “being dead.”

The school district is dying.

Money continues to disappear like water through a poorly-stopped drain. The best part — or worst — is that, for all intents and purposes, none of this is anybody’s “fault.” Not enough to cast blame, anyway, which is the only kind of fault worth discussing.

Just about everybody with an ounce of power or responsibility (and nowadays, both are oozing everywhere like runaway bathwater) is scrambling to pick up the pieces to the best of their ability. We may laud or sneer at their choices or their competence, but it’s no longer a question of who’s truly trying. Nearly everyone, from top to bottom, is doing their damnedest to stem the fiscal hemorrhage.

It’s too little, and much, much too late. The horses have fled, trailing $100 bills and cackling madly, and nobody noticed until they were in Tijuana. Now the stable doors have slammed shut, but the damage that’s been done is far more important than the damage which has yet to happen.

And somebody might as well say it.

We are broke.

Before there was a kind of jovial undertone — oh, ha ha, we’re a bit short on cash, have to make some changes. Now the matter has escalated to alarming urgency, and playtime is over. Things are going to go. Anything that costs money will be examined and tweaked to make it cost less. In some cases that will mean it will disappear. Money is needed. If Faustian yard-sales are necessary, they will happen. The problem has been front-burnered and resources focused on it in an attempt to defuse the crisis before it explodes.

Whether or not that will happen remains to be seen.

Somebody once said that the secret to success in politics lies in knowing what bugs to step on and which ones to step around. Which messes to dive into and which ones to bail from. The same could be said of anything. Like teaching.

With that presumably in mind, certain key members of the school’s support personnel are evaporating, fled to safer ports. There are very few “key” roles in our school’s hierarchy, but those that exist provide pillar-like support, without which very little can function at all. Counselors are one of these. Counselors are leaving.

The Contact sheet will be changed to reflect this as soon as (1) The temporary situation stabilizes, and (2) It feels less like grave-robbing.

Meetings, conferences, and alarm sessions of the “Who/What gets the shaft?” variety are starting to take place. The most useful thing we can do is quote the words of the co-principals verbatim. Read this page for a reproduction of the email sent by Valles and Leventer on Monday.

Check it out.

Kiswahili? Yep.

Fluent or beginner, if you’re interested in learning a bit of it, drop by the Bear’s Lair on the UC Berkeley campus (Bancroft and Telegraph). UCB’s Center for African Studies Kiswahili Language Table, every Friday for the rest of the semester. From noon until 1:00 or so.

Bring a dictionary, have fun, and if you need more information, contact the Center for African Studies at (510) 642-8338.

In cheerful light of the current situation, a new poll has been posted. Go ahead, throw the first stone.

— Brandon