Warmth and challenges

The warm-up has continued throughout the end of the week and this weekend with Wednesday as the coldest day (with the temperatures in the single digits even without the wind) and warming continuing through the weekend when temperatures reached into the 60s. (This picture was taken Thursday.) By Saturday evening much snow and ice had melted. Other challenges mounted, however: The ice and snow kept Stephanie and her students away from school for four days. That was half of the two weeks during which she was to administer annual one-on-one English language assessment tests to all her students. These tests help determine which students leave the English as a second language program and which ones stay. Her testing will have to continue past the deadline, some into this coming week. My odd health problems have recurred with a crown that was installed after I got a root canal a year or two ago coming out THREE times in the past couple of weeks (including during that critical snow-bound week when I couldn't get to the crown, then into the dentist's office for several weeks). Once again, over the weekend the crown came off. Also, this past Thursday (same day the picture of the house was taken) we received a certfied letter (envelope pictured below) from the principal of Vincent's school stating his intention to exit Vincent from the school because of fall semester's bad grades. This was a bit of a surprise because the guidance counselor had led us to believe this was unlikely to happen (even though at one point I had said we would transfer Vincent to another school if he didn't pass his classes). Stephanie and Vincent talked with the guidance counselor and it seems that we should build a case that Vincent's school work is improving and he is on track to graduate if they'll just let hiim stay. I have mixed feelings about all of this - and Vincent isn't entirely coopererating - as - although I think he wants to stay - he's stalling on having the actual meeting with the principal and he's not making a bee line to finish up one of the two on-line classes he already has to take. I have my doubts about his claim that he's doing well already in his spring semester classes. But if teachers would come forward and document/attest to that, that might help Vincent's case. We'll see what happens. If Vincent is exited, our idea is that he should take the eight classes (?!) he would need to grudate on-line and graduate - perhaps even on time - from "Jefferson County High School." (Recall he's already taken several on-line classes previously.) However, it isn't clear whether he would actually have the tenacity to do all of this. I think it'd be easier to finish the classes he's already in (although he'd have to pass almost all of them to graduate on time.) And it's unclear if he's done much on his senior project in the past few months (which he'd need to complete to graduate from Brown).

-- Perry