Mornings find me slipping into TV Land as I feed Mom scrambled eggs or syrup saturated pancakes. I sit beside her on the couch, holding her Boost as she struggles to take single sips at the straw. My childhood favorites fill the background with black and white clarity. The pleasant plots contrast to Mom's daily decline. The soft humor nudges giggles from us. Will Beaver get his tonsils removed? Will Laura's big toe come out of the faucet? Will Aunt Bea's pickles win the prize?
These episodes uphold with gentle playfulness, honesty and optimism. Perhaps these simple stories simmer in my subconscious, providing the basis for my undying belief in people striving to do the best for those they love.
Last
night, I found myself trapped on I10 in a van driven by the principal from
Abbot Elementary. The quirky faculty sitting all around me, we protested in
unison against the cars that ensnared the vehicle and prevented forward
movement. Frustration fomented and fumed because there was nowhere to go, no
exit ahead. My brain dragged out my personal experience of Hurricane Rita’s
2005 nightmare where we spent more than twenty-four hours in stopped traffic
watching our gas gauges dipping lower with our anxiety shooting higher.
Slapping
the alarm clock to silence this morning, I woke up puzzled by this peculiar
dream. Then I remembered the real nightmare created in Texas by our malicious
Governor Abbott as he viciously ties public school spending into his pet
private school voucher program. Texas public school districts face millions of
dollars in deficits even when the State has the largest surplus of funds in
state history. Abbott insists that school districts caused their own problems
with mismanagement of funds.
Before
I went to sleep last night, I read the struggles of Judson ISD board members as
they face a $32 million dollar deficit, and no way to continue with pay
incentives they implemented in the 2023-2024 budget without bleeding more red.
Districts also have to fulfill House Bill 3, Texas’s response to the Uvalde
slaughter, to force districts to implement new guards and security standards
with inadequate funding from the State.
Internalizing
the no win scenarios from the most recent news facing Texas public schools put
me back onto I10 blocked into the far left lane. Now that I’m awake, I recall
the panic I felt when I got out of my car to chat with my brother and son
trapped in traffic directly behind me. My mother, already overdue for her
medications, went into a Huntington’s disease tirade as we discussed our
options. With nothing to lose, I knocked on the windows of the cars immediately
in front and behind us in the next lane, begging for help from the drivers to
squeeze their vehicles forward, or back, just enough for us to maneuver into
the lane. Once our two car caravan settled into the middle lane, I repeated my
plea with the next set of drivers, who edged just enough for us to move over
and ahead again. We snaked ourselves to an exit in this way—one car at a time
cooperating—until we steered of the stalled interstate and onto an access road.
This
solution to forward movement may be the only choice for Texas public schools.
One person at a time: one parent, one faculty, one district needs to pressure
by voting against a governor that implements slash-and-burn policies.
