In the news
Is Celine Dion a houseplant?

by Terri Mauro

New kids on campus.
Our neighborhood school doesn't feel like home.

by Terri Mauro

An interesting thing about having children in special education is that you never can tell what school they're going to be in. Instead of their home school, the kids are bounced to whatever campus happens to be hosting their particular program that year. Ironic, of course, that the children who most need stability, structure, and predictability in their school environment are the least likely to get it. In our district, anyway, it's often not decided until a few weeks before classes start where a child will end up, much less with whom.

My kids have never gone to our neighborhood school, though my daughter has been lucky enough to stay in the same cross-town school for five years. My son has been in two different schools, but for the last three years has been in the same school as his sister. That school has come to feel like home to us--the kids know their way around the building, I know my way around the system. I've let myself get more and more involved in the Home and School Association in the hope that this would be the place where my two would continue through their elementary years.

But now, there's talk of moving them both. And, surprisingly enough, it's to our own neighborhood school. No more explaining to people why they go to the school they do. No more driving cross-town for playdates. The sheer normalcy of it is exciting. We drive by the building every day now, thinking about it. It's a nice-looking, all-American kind of school, two stories, vaguely colonial architecture, welcoming sign out front. Different from the school they've been going to. On a main street instead of a side street. Next to a restaurant instead of an apartment building. Across from a church instead of electrical towers. Bigger, but more contained. Will my kids like it? Will the kids there like them? The first day of school is a summer away, but we're already feeling the anticipation and anxiety.

Them, and me too. I wouldn't say I've made a lot of friends at that other school in that other neighborhood, but at least the people are familiar to me and with me. I'm comfortable there. The school my son went to before joining his sister was a school I emphatically didn't feel comfortable at. It was in one of the ritziest neighborhoods in town, and the moms were all well-toned and Spandex clad with big hair and good tans, and I'm this little schlumpy thing with two special-ed kids and no darn time to sell tickets to the fashion-show fund-raiser. I couldn't get my guy out of that school fast enough.

What if the moms at the new school aren't nice? What if the Home and School is cliquish, and has all sorts of rules I won't know? The moms there will be my neighbors, so I truly do have to live with them. And what about the principal? I pretty much had the old one figured out, and now I'll have to get to be known all over again. Hard as it is on the kids to be bopped around from school to school, it may be harder on moms like me, who try to get involved and get to know the staff and be part of the school scene. I've been promised that if we make this move, the kids won't have to move again until junior high. Don't think I could take any more than that.

Who wants to elect a multi-millionaire?
New Jersey Democrats go for the guy
who shows them the money.

by Terri Mauro

Well, according to the pundits, I have been bought.

The New Jersey primaries were finally held yesterday. That's right, we finally got to weigh in on that hotly contested presidential race, long after our choice became irrelevant. But the election did turn out to be interesting for the Democratic Senate race, between a Wall Street millionaire with no political experience and the most hated politician in New Jersey.

That would be Jim Florio, former governor, best-known for raising taxes and inspiring a wave of protest that put "Dump Florio" bumper stickers on an annoyingly large proportion of the state's cars. He's been lying low since being unseated by Republican Christie Todd Whitman. He's tanned, rested, and ready. He's also, if his campaign ads are any indication, still a mean, hard-fighting son-of-a-gun who never learned that if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.

Of course, that sort of attitude doesn't have much place in politics these days. Yet most candidates do attempt to say what they stand for at least as loudly as they say why their opponents are scumbags. In the weeks approaching the election, I don't think I even once saw a Florio ad that said anything about Florio. They were all about some big bad thing that the other candidate, Jon Corzine, did as chairman of the investment firm Goldman Sachs. Or rather, things that Goldman Sachs did that we should blame on Corzine. Florio threatened at the onset to run a "scorched earth" campaign, and that he did. But while he provided plenty of reasons not to vote for Corzine, he failed to provide a single reason why anyone should vote for him. Guess he figured that the last man standing on all that scorched earth would have to be the winner.

Turns out that standing man is Corzine--$35 million buys a lot of flameproofing. That's how much this political unknown spent to get known, and he spent it in interesting ways. On fancy-pants ads that looked great and actually told you what the candidate was in favor of--oh bold move! Now, those things were pretty warm and fuzzy, I'll grant. Universal health care! Day care all around! Like a freshman senator is going to be able to actually do anything. But his agenda was specific and unabashedly liberal, without the middle-of-the-road hedges we've come to expect. He gave money to Democratic organizations across the state, made contributions to minority groups, held dinners for supporters in which he actually paid for the plates. Toward the end, there were some attack ads, but he needn't have bothered; most folks here can think of bad things about Florio without any prompting.

Trials and tribulations
Full days of jury duty, half days of school.

by Terri Mauro

My husband has jury duty week after next. This would not be a problem--doing his civic duty and all--except that 1) he had already taken that week off for vacation and 2) the reason he had taken it off for vacation is because it's the last week of school and the kids have four half-days in a row. Two days of that week I go into work, and he was going to be available for 1 p.m. pick-up. But now the court's got dibs. This problem became clear after it was too late for him to plead child-care needs and try to ditch his duty, so we just have to wait and hope they decide at the last minute that he's not needed.

I've actually never minded jury duty much myself; it's like a paid vacation from reality. I rarely get on a case, so it's a nice time to catch up on some reading in the waiting room, if I can ignore the Jerry Springer episodes somebody always turns the TV to. The one time I was actually chosen for a jury, we wound up hung. It seemed like an open-and-shut case, but the prosecuting attorney was so inarticulate and inept and the defense attorney was like something straight out of "L.A. Law," and the latter ran rings around the evidence so successfully that he formed reasonable doubt in the mind of one very stubborn juror. The protestations of her 11 colleagues meant nothing, and so we made no decision. Not exactly a satisfying way to spend a week.

The most satisfying jury-duty experience I've ever had was my spell on a Grand Jury--one day a week for ten weeks. We heard multiple cases each day, and the great part was that we weren't deciding anyone's guilt or innocence, just determing whether there was enough evidence to go to trial. A majority could do that; didn't need that pesky unanimity. The legal eagles in charge of the proceedings were highly articulate and often funny. Some of the cases were unpleasant, which made me glad that I didn't have to live with them for weeks. Clearly, if one has to be on a jury at all, this is the way to go.

But not the way my husband has to go; he's scheduled for a solid week, and the kids aren't quite. Whose idea is this half-day school stuff anyway? Why have a last week of school if it only works out to half a week? And speaking of working, don't they realize that a lot of parents do? Are they just trying to phase the kids out? My two are going straight from that week into two weeks of half-day camp, so we have a lot of empty afternoons in our future. Let's hope there are no protracted jury trials in Papa's.

It's the thought that counts
So why do I have to think so hard about
gifts for the teacher?

by Terri Mauro

The end of school is two weeks away, which is a good thing because it means the kids have successfully navigated another year through the educational system, and a bad thing because I am responsible for successfully navigating them through another understructured summer. But the hardest thing about the end of school isn't figuring out how to handle all those end-of-year half-days, or figuring out where to send them for camp, or figuring out how to keep their brains running for three months so they won't be stalled in September--it's figuring out what to give the teachers for year-end thank-you gifts.

Gifts are a good thing because they give you a chance to show your appreciation to the people who have taken the little ones off your hands for nine grueling months and actually taught them something in the process, and a bad thing because you know whatever you buy will wind up on the big heap of useless junk the teachers get from similarly thoughtful but clueless parents. I look at the racks and racks of little apples and little schoolhouses on the Hallmark shelves and wonder how many of each the teacher will be getting. I try not to obsess about this; I want to get something nice, but I don't want the choice to take over my life. In the end, it's the thought that counts, though I don't suppose that's much comfort when she opens her fifth or sixth desktop bell or wooden apple calendar.

I'll admit, I'm also pretty cheap when it comes to teacher gifts, which does not reflect on my esteem for those individuals, but mostly reflects on the sheer number of individuals involved in any one year of special education. At times, when both kids were in special ed, we might have had two teachers, four aides, two bus drivers, two bus aides, two speech therapists, one physical therapist, and two occupational therapists. Even getting all those folks an inexpensive gift adds up fast. I'd think about ranking the personnel in terms of time and effort spent with each child and then giving each a class of gift that corresponds with their relative investment, but pretty soon I'd need to quit my job in order to work through all the various permutations. And then I'd have even less money for gifts.

I remember the first Christmas I had a child in school, I brought the teacher and aides and therapists pumpkin bread for a gift. I thought that was a nice thing, from the heart; not a big deal, just a thoughtful gesture. Then I happened to get a look in their back room, and saw piles of huge gifts. I've never felt comfortable just gesturing since. Though in fact, they may have enjoyed the pumpkin bread more than the contents of those boxes. One teacher friend tells of receiving one year, from a young pupil, the gift of a bra. And not just any bra, but one that was well-worn and sweat-stained. His mom is probably still searching the washing machine for it, wondering where it went.

I figure I can do better than that. And if not, I won't be alone out there on the big heap of useless junk.

copyright © 2000 by Terri Mauro