297 Jake’s Old School 2 (1/2)
Mary approached the office and found a woman near the same age, yet she looked exhausted with hair falling out of her tight bun. Mary knocked on the open door to get her attention. ”Hello, I'm Mary Atkins. Are you Principal Lambert?”
The haggard woman looked up from her stack of paperwork and tried to focus on Mary. ”Mary Atkins? Oh. Right. The foster mom.” Mary felt a sting in her chest, but brushed it off. ”Just take a seat anywhere you like.”
Although the principal said 'anywhere', there was only one available seat that didn't have papers or any type of clutter on it. Mary chose the one clean seat and the principal started pushing papers aside so they could keep eye contact over the desk.
”I'll be frank with you, Mrs. Atkins.” The Principal looked at her, exhibiting pure exhaustion. ”I didn't know Jake Hollander personally. The only reason I could recall the name is because we keep records of when, why, and for who we call child services for. I've spoken with his teachers and not one had a personal relationship with him. He's just another student in the crowd of kids that attend this institution.”
Mary was stunned. ”Excuse me? How can you say that about a former student?” Her anger was on the brink of flaring up and lashing out.
”Easy.” She gestured at the stacks of paper on her desk. ”We're overworked. Underpaid. Understaffed. The student to teacher ratio is a whopping 35 to 1, in a good year. Which is astoundingly bad for an elementary school, but what can I do? The state doesn't give underperforming schools a whole lot of money to work with which makes our scores get even worse. We're lucky if we can just move our students up to the middle school. I really hate seeing our dropout rate compared to the state and national average.”
Mary didn't know what to say. On one hand, she was upset that a young Jake could just be referred to as another number but on the other, she could tell that this principal was at her wits end. ”Have you thought about applying to grants for underprivileged schools?”
She gestured at one particular stack of papers. ”I spend most of my time filling them out and sending them off. If I could get an actual receptionist who cares for her job, that would lessen my load. But who wants to work with a failing school for little pay?” She sighed. ”Sorry for ranting. I'm just tired.” She turned to the desk behind her and grabbed a manila envelope. She turned back and handed it to Mary. ”This is what I could gather and scrounge up for you.”
Mary took it, amazed that the disheveled woman had put something together even though she seemed to be drowning in work.
”It's not much so don't get your hopes up.” Principal Lambert spoke bluntly. ”Most of it, is the report that had to be made when we called child services. The result listed that there was a home visit, but the findings stated that the child wasn't at an imminent risk for death or serious injury.”
”What?!” Mary exploded out of her seat. ”How did they come to that conclusion?? Do they know how wrong they were??”
”Mrs. Atkins.” Principal Lambert sighed. ”I'm not the social worker assigned to the case. I just have the report that was made by the teacher and the answer child services gave to us. As for the rest of the information I included, I had his former teachers write out statements of what they remember of him. Fair warning, most have told me that he wasn't very personable and shied away from making friends. None of them could name a specific friend or classmate that he was close to.”