The End Of KRECR And An Unrelated Picture

Here's another view of the Bald Hills, just because it's such a beautiful place. It's unrelated to the rest of the post.

Today was a beautiful fall day. We hiked out to the ocean through the Tolowa Dunes, just one of several amazing ecosystems that surround us. We passed by many different mushrooms on the trail, and way too many of the yellow banana slugs that call this place home, too.

Once we got to the beach, we watched the waves, picked out beautiful rocks and driftwood, got kisses from a dog there with other people, and left as the fog reached back onto the land.

On the hike back to the trail head, we realized that it's almost exactly a year since Michael came back to Del Norte from Pennsylvania. Darcy and I moved back two months earlier, but Michael needed to finish up some work at Delaware Water Gap before coming back to Redwood. In the last year, we have settled back into our community here almost as if we'd never left.

When we left Del Norte for Pennsylvania, the last place we stopped was Darcy's school, the Klamath River Early College of the Redwoods, known as KRECR (pronounced krecker -- with a short 'e'). We had asked Darcy if she wanted to see our empty house or just remember it as we lived there and she chose not to see it empty. So she went to school like any other day and we picked her up in the afternoon and drove out of town with very heavy hearts.

Her classmates and after-school friends had loaded her down with gifts -- unexpected things I needed to find space for during our long drive across the country. She also had a pea shoot to try to keep alive on that drive. (You can see it in a Pennsylvania hotel here.)

Darcy started back at KRECR just three days after flying back from Pennsylvania last year. She had a great year. 

She went back again this year. We had high hopes despite a staff change over, decreased enrollment, and other issues, but KRECR was facing serious hurdles. After weeks of late night discussions, we moved Darcy to a new school this week. It was a difficult decision, one we didn't make lightly, and one that created a lot of sadness and guilt in our family. We wanted to support the school. We tried to hold on during a difficult transition. In the end, we just couldn't let Darcy watch her school fall apart around her any more.

For most of this week, I had put away the sadness. My last three minute encounter at KRECR on Darcy's last day had made me so angry that I hardened my heart to the school's troubles and moved on with my life. The anger was justified, but the cause isn't important now.

Yesterday, KRECR announced that it will close after December 19th. There are simply not enough students left to maintain the school. At first, even hearing this, knowing that a dear friend's heart would be breaking with this news, I couldn't feel sad about it because of those last three minutes.

But truly, KRECR is bigger than my last encounter and it's bigger and better than this shortened school year. It was started with love to bring an alternative to this community, one focused on place and culture. It's goals were to help every child thrive at their own pace, to instill a dream of college in a community where that is so often not the dream, to use restorative justice to resolve conflicts in a more meaningful way than suspensions and expulsions allow, and to create a school that honored this place and the people who have lived here since time immemorial.

We gained two new school board members in this week's election. Neither of them, based on the non-partisan debate I attended, seem likely to support the kind of learning environment we valued at KRECR. It would be nice to think that we could bring some of what we loved about our school to the larger school district. In very small ways, maybe we can. But a larger overhaul of the system will require that all parents stand up and demand change and put tremendous pressure on the school board. 

Darcy was elected last month to be KRECR's school historian. Now that it is closing, it is up to all of us who loved the school to make sure its legacy is not judged by its last few months.

Guest Post: Salad Bar for KRECR

Today's blog post is written by Darcy Jo. It is her choice of topic and her words. I am writing only this introduction:

My name is Darcy Jo.At school, we made puzzle pieces that showed what KRECR needs.My puzzle piece said the school needs a salad bar.I think it had one last year,but
no one got salad, and they sold it.But I remember that when I was in kindergarten,
I went to Pine Grove, and they had a salad bar.They used to have early out on
Friday, but they now have it on Wednesday.My school still has it on Friday.
On early out days you do not have lunch.We could borrow the salad bar on
Wednesday and make it Salad Bar Day.

Last Day Of Kindergarten -- She's Off!

Glamour Rats!

Here's what you need to know about the Pine Grove performance of Rats: it was outstanding. I say this not because Darcy was in it, but because the teachers and volunteers did an amazing job of pulling together three classes of elementary school students and creating an evening of actually enjoyable theater.

But of course, Darcy was my favorite part. It was hard to get pictures, but here is our small rat in ensemble:

She is the small rat in the middle. Nice set, huh? There were similar houses on the other side. I think this is during the first big song about how wonderful Hamelin is. Here's one of Darcy's big scenes. She and a rat friend are following the librarian while reading and crying over Three Blind Mice (because of the tails, you know), which they had stolen:

It was impossible to get good images of the stage, so we did a photo shoot before she had to turn in her ears and tail:

She's Always OUR Student of the Month

And this month, Darcy's the Student of the Month for her class! Yay Darcy Jo! Darcy's school does a great job of acknowledging student achievement and each month, all the teachers choose one of their students as Student of the Month for their class. At the monthly assembly, the principal calls them up one at a time, puts her arm around them, and reads what their teachers wrote about them in the nomination.

This is what Darcy's teacher wrote about her:

"Darcy's enthusiasm and energy make her a force to be reckoned with in kindergarten and everywhere else she goes! Darcy is a curious, creative learner always full of questions and the desire to know more. Darcy already reads first grade books with fluency, accuracy and wonderful expression. She is a focused student who can block out anything when she is concentrating on a task. Watch out world, Darcy is on her way, and nothing is going to stop this girl!"

Earlier in the week, I got an even bigger (in my mind) compliment. I was waiting with Darcy at her school for their PTO-sponsored December Gift Shop to open. A teacher I didn't recognize came over and introduced herself as one of the special education teachers and told me that she wanted to let me know that Darcy is always welcoming and friendly and inclusive to her special ed students. She was so sweet and told me how much she appreciates students who treat her kids as they do everyone else and that Darcy really stands out in this regard. Go Darcy Jo! Michael was bursting with so much pride over this report that he broke the no-dessert-on-school-nights rule and busted out a special dessert for her.

Angela Works Sometimes

I mostly stick to non-work stuff for this blog, but I thought I'd use a few days this month to let you all know about the work side of our lives. One of the things I get to do at my job is community gardening. This year, we started two large new community gardens that are thriving. One of them has been in the works since before we moved to Crescent City two years ago. The Elk Valley Community Garden serves our local Hmong community, many of whom were farmers before coming to the United States as refugees during and after the Viet Nam War. This garden is amazing, as the following series of photos will demonstrate:

Elk Valley Garden site, mid-March, 2011

We had a break in the rain early spring this year and we were able to get one of our volunteers to go to the site and till the sod. Unfortunately, he discovered that there was a lot of debris (large rocks, rusted metal, glass) that needed to be removed before he could till deeply, so he left the site looking like this:



About a month after that, the Hmong gardeners came out and combed the site, pulling out everything that could destroy a tiller.

 By the time all that was done and the site was tilled, it was late May. We went out and measured and marked the beds (each family has a 10' by 30' plot) and within two weeks, a blush of green was covering most of the plots:

The eagerness of our Hmong gardeners is overwhelming sometimes. When we marked the second half of the beds, gardeners were working within AN HOUR. By the end of the summer, the garden was so lush with plants at every stage of development (new seedlings that had replaced earlier plantings, plants ready for harvest, and plants going to seed because most of our gardeners are seed savers) that it was very difficult to remember that it had existed for less than four months:

This garden makes me happy. It's feeding well over a hundred people, many of them harvesting every day for their family meals. Twenty-four families are gardening here and it's common to see three generations working together on the same bed. There's a waiting list for space and we're hoping that the land-owner might allow us to fence more space next year and add 10 to 15 additional plots. Even that will not fill the demand for long, but it's a start. 

This is one of the most rewarding parts of my job, but there are others, too. We just did an interview with a local reporter this morning about our community gleaning project. In our first year, we gathered over 4,500 hundred pounds of locally-produced veggies and other food from farmers and backyard gardeners to distribute through our food bank. A week and a half ago, we officially elected 14 people to our Community Food Council, which was just a dream 12 months ago when we were planning the very first outreach meeting. Slowly, but surely, we're changing the face of food in our community. The need is great and there's still a lot to do, but we make a little bit of progress day by day.

In a shout-out to my wonderful husband, he helped bring about a system change in the school food system last month. There were several menu items on October's menu that were ambiguous as to their vegetarian status and Darcy is very keen on being able to have hot lunch every once in a while. Michael exchanged several emails with the head of food services for the district and this is the result:

Note the first Monday box on the lunch menu. No more ambiguity! And they even changed the names of some of the entrees. The "whole grain cheese pizza" was called "whole grain piazza pizza" last month. Yay, Michael!

"Special Day For Me!"

And so it is. The first day of kindergarten. A very special day for Darcy and she woke up chanting softly, "Special day for me! Special day for me!" I think she might have been a little excited about starting school today. Above, getting ready to climb into the truck to go to school. Below, outside her classroom itching to get inside and start being in elementary school. She knows at least one other person in her class AND in the after-school program, which she's also completely excited about. She is in a K/1 composite class and looks very, very small compared to the rest of the kids. We'll have a report about the first day later. Now I need to get started with a very busy week of work.