Late Tuesday

Vincent and I went to the Jefferson County High School orientation for an hour plus. The guy was pretty good but almost all of the orientation was premised on people doing the in-person JCHS, instead of the all e-school JCHS, which Vincent and a couple of other kids there were interested in. The school – with its adult education model – has go-at-your-own-pace workbooks that sounded to me like the math program at my Gainesville middle school. There were maybe a dozen kids – including a sophomore from Vincent’s old school – there, like Vincent, with his parents. And half a dozen kids 18 years old or older were there by themselves. Kids in the in-person version of the school have to go to school at least three hours a day and they have textbooks – but – otherwise – the logic of it is somewhat like the e-school. In the e-school, you go at your own pace through classes – waiting only sometimes for essays or some tests to be graded – but usually no more than a day and can work at home. I left as Vincent prepared to take the test. Vincent said he had trouble doing math with decimals without a calculator (he’s totally dependent on calculators), which made the math test harder, but did well on most of the rest of the test. To get in the school, students have to score at least at the 6th grade level on the math and English scores – but must score at least 11th grade levels – to graduate. I’m sure Vincent did well enough to get into the school. We’ll see if he gets the 11th grade scores on the math test. We’ll find out within a week. After the test, Vincent met again with the same woman who we talked with on Monday morning and he signed up for two dual-enrollment college classes (English and math). After that it was off to see his girlfriend (he took my advice and did not go near school to connect with his friends – I thought the school people would frown if he got too close to school (especially when he’s got this court date coming up on Friday).

I had a couple of daunting conversations at work before and after with and then about a client who’s essentially asking us to ignore the furlough and make deadlines as if there were no furlough. Late Tuesday one of my colleagues asked for a reference – she’s applying for a job near where she lives – If she quits, I bet we won’t be able to replace her. So, we won’t get any one laid off, but we’ll still end up being down a staff person.

-- Perry