The school board has nothing to do with funding, or the unfunded legal requirements imposed at the federal level. In Texas, you can propose a "bond" to local voters, in which residents may agree to pay some amount extra in property taxes for a few years that goes straight to the schools--but aside from the difficulty of getting people to vote for higher taxes on themselves, those bonds are specifically prohibited from ever covering teacher salaries. And that's how you end up with nonsense like the local suburb voting to build a fucking pool in 2 of the high schools, when they simultaneously cannot afford to hire more teachers for those schools.

You want to know how bad it's gotten, trying to hire teachers since COVID?

My kid's school (kid singular now, since the older one is off to college) had an upper level math teacher who was retiring last year. Cool, fine, he gave plenty of notice. Only they couldn't find a qualified replacement. At all. With the new school year approaching, they begged him to come back for one more semester. He agreed, but made it very clear that this was just for one semester.

So they lowered their standards to look for anyone who was even medium-qualified for this level of math, figuring they could train. Still absolutely no candidates. They couldn't even find anyone who could teach lower-level math, in the hopes that they could force one of their existing teachers to upgrade.

With January now approaching, they started looking at completely unqualified people--i.e., folks who had never taught students before, but at least had some kind, ANY kind, of math credentials. And finally, they hired this guy, we'll call him Mr. Bob.

Now, Minifobette has been telling me stories all semester about how weird Mr. Bob is, but mostly it's seemed like he's just very awkward, with a deadpan sense of humor that the kids don't get. Like, when he said he doesn't listen to music because it's the gateway to the devil, that's just him trolling the high school kids, right?

But no. A week ago, one of the kids saw a handwritten list of students on Mr. Bob's desk. The kid asked what the list was for, and Mr. Bob had a full fucking meltdown in front of them. Turns out Mr. Bob is severely schizophrenic, and the list was of certain students in the classroom that he believed weren't real.

So now the class is going to be covered by a substitute teacher for the rest of the school year, and no more math will be learned. And they still have no teacher for next year.

I think it's very common to feel guilty about not feeling "sad enough," even when there isn't estrangement at play. No one gets to tell anyone else how to do grief the right way. I'm glad we get to be here for you in whatever way you need.

I can set a new email address for you directly, just PM me with the one you want it to be.

I'm so sorry that happened to your brother, Dana! I won't derail a game-thread any further, but please feel free to hop in anywhere--the place is pretty quiet these days, but folks are still here. We're like an old married couple that can comfortably sit in silence but still holds hands.

It was just the corner of the coffee table, too--I think I've officially hit the "old lady who bruises for no reason" stage.

Hi Dana!

When it comes to writing about it, the first question you have to answer is whether the characters' emotional states are part of the effect-and-cause timeline or not (which is basically like asking whether they have a soul, or whether they are bags of chemicals devoid of free will.)

Scenario 1: I feel a growing, unidentifiable sadness for years upon years, which eventually becomes completely debilitating until one day--poof--my eight-year-old kid is un-hit by a car, and pops into existence, at which point my sadness is instantly eliminated.

Scenario 2: I feel fine and normal until one day--poof--my eight-year-old kid is un-hit by a car, and pops into existence, at which point I feel instant, terrible grief for the long life I now know he will have never lived, and that pain slowly wanes over time as we all get younger and I move further away from the initial shock and grief I experienced.

tw wrote:

Resulting losses will appear four and 20 years later.

You won't believe it, but this is exactly the same number of blackbirds I baked in my pie.

Wow! That's so neat. I'm proud.

Does anyone stay in touch with Tony? I feel like he'd want to know, but other than sending him a PM here or at the old site, I don't have a good way to reach out.

Just barely below freezing, a dusting of snow on the ground, and all our spare sheets covering as many plants as we could manage. We'll see what survives.