On the Road to No Child Left Behind “Opening the Mail Box”

On a rainy day in late July or early August of 2007, I went to register my child at the local middle school in our area.  As I walked in I was impressed by the cleanliness and orderliness of my surrounding and thought well my child could adjust to attending this school.  I met the Assistant Principal a tall slim responsible looking and acting individual who I chatted with briefly as she looked my child up in her computer.  I told her that I really liked her office with the positive words on the walls and left for the most part confident that my child would have a positive educational experience.  As I arrived home from registering my child, I looked in the mailbox and saw a letter from the school that I just left.  I assumed that it was just another welcome letter, but as I opened it I was shocked to find out that the school that I had just registered my child for had not made AYP for two years.  Not only had they not made AYP but they had not made it in MATH and the scores was extremely low in the core subjects of Math and Science.  Their one saving grace was their extremely high scores in reading, language arts and social studies.  After looking at those scores I became very disappointed that the Vice Principal could have spoken to me like nothing was wrong and not even mentioned the little problem. As I continued to read the letter I was given two choices for the No Child Left Behind School to transfer my child to if I so chose.  I was familiar with one school and the excellent principal at this particular school so excitedly chose this school.  However I would soon discover that their was a huge caveat to my choice. “A SHOCKING ONE”  In any event I faxed in my information and received a letter stating my child would be attending this middle school. In the meantime I received a letter from my child’s original school inviting me to come and hear why they failed no child left behind.  I attended and discovered that the front entrance of the school hid a terrible and run down back part of the school.  As I walked into the cafeteria of the school I was shocked to find plastic plants, all over the cafeteria, and even on the podium.  This was extremely disgusting and made me want to literally scream, this along with bottle of water in a bowl and small bags of potato chips as refreshments on the table was a little hard to take, but I stayed.  I however had to go to the bathroom and found toilet paper behind my head at standing level and graffiti all over the walls.  By this time there was nothing that could be said to me to let my child go to the school, add to that a PTA President that seemed to have autism like symptoms and I knew this was not the school for our family.  I did sit through the presentation and was not convinced to stay.  Even now I have to imitate a SIMS character and say un un and shake my head no!  It further hit home to me the disrepair of the school as I attended a jazz festival at a park across from the school and watched brown ooze stream down from the back of the school creating a huge brown stain running from the roof down the body of the building.  I shuddered at the festival.