Good morning Panther Nation!
I worked on Federal Programs yesterday (what a joy!) It is pretty easy to imagine the red tape that comes with federal dollars. All adults and several older students have experienced the monotony of bureaucracy. Whether it be filling out government forms for scholarships or your taxes. Necessary evil I say. I absolutely get rules and regulations, they are so important in regulating our culture and is in part what makes us an excellent society and in my opinion the greatest country in the world. Why else do so many people want to live here from other parts of the world? Back to paperwork. I spend approximately thirty percent of my job working to get federal dollars for our students. MCR-2 receives a skosh short of seven percent of our entire budget from the federal government for educational purposes. Utterly, nowhere else in the business world of any kind, would management spend thirty percent of resources to attain a seven percent return. I am not trying to act like an economist, financial advisor, or a stock trader. I’m just laying out the facts of a small business manager (which is what I am supposed to be). Big-but-here, schools are not a business! We say they are and we try to operate them as such. Impossible feat, due to the fact that our product we are trying to sell is an individualized education. We educate every student that walks through the door with different needs …. everyday all school year long. Don’t get me wrong, I love my job and actually can’t fathom the idea of walking away in retirement. However, what we do every solitary day is because we love kids. We are not going to send them back to the ordering company just because they struggle in math, reading, science, social studies or they can’t do ten push-ups, sing in tune (wow, that is me), draw a stick figure (wow, that is me as well), bake a cake that tastes good (dang, me again), build computer coding that actually works (I can’t do that either), or make a strong metallurgical weld (I actually can do that). We don’t send kids back to the factory like a bunch of bad bananas. Our staff works hard to educate each and every child no matter where they are educationally. I have been so fortunate/blessed to spend the lion’s share of my career at Mound City! A special place indeed.
Stay healthy!