LAST OF THE SUMMER WHINE*

I love the beginning of the school year...always have, even as a kid...new students, new books, (or computers in this day and age) new clothes and shoes...a fresh start for everyone, me included!

But as I get older the excitement of a new year seems to wear off a little quicker.  Here I am, starting my 30th year as an educator (that's right I started teaching at the age of 10...can you say Doogie Howser) and the newness has already wore off.

I'm already tired of state reports, budgets, state reports, requisitions forms, state reports, leave forms, state reports and bus routes... especially bus routes!!
                                                                                    

I took this duty on a couple of years ago in order to save some money for the district...I mean how tough can it be...we know where students live, we know that a bus needs to drive to their house twice a day picking up and dropping off the students and we know that the county has a road that connects all residents in the school district.  Pretty simple idea...schools have been doing it for years...

First of all, no one told me about the fact that every parent wants their kids to be the last one picked up in the morning and the first one dropped off at night!!  No matter how far from town they may live.

And then the map making experience...a combination of orienteering, geometry and coloring...Please stay within the lines!!

Really, try drawing up routes in this county...you'll quickly find that you can't get there from here!!  You can see the next house but what should be a two-minute, one-mile drive actually becomes a eight-minute four-mile drive because the road that use to connect those two farmsteads is no longer in use!!

This year I thought I would use technology to help me solve my transportation problems and logged into Google Maps to draw up the routes...well I guess Google experts weren't notified when the county decided they could no longer afford to replace a bridge or maintain a road, because after entering all of the addresses for my bus stops Google Map simply drew nice straight lines between the farmsteads with no regard to whether or not the roads were still passable or not.

So it was back to a ruler a pencil and some colored markers to make up maps for another year...and about the time I think I'm done comes the dreaded phone call from a new family,

"Welcome to the District, you are living where? I'm sorry, I can't get there from here!"


*My apologies to the great BBC series, "Last of the Summer Wine."