Crazy stuff

A week ago there was a School Board Meeting where next year's scheduled tuition increase was overturned.

Yes. Apparently, complain enough and the continuing facilities expansion no longer needs to get funded. Complain enough and new teachers don't need to be hired to keep the class sizes small (12-16 kids). Complain enough and the massive ESL program (40% of the student population, 26 teachers... I think that's a full quarter of the teachers - just for ESL) doesn't need to continue to improve.

So what happens next year? The huge and still growing ESL population is pushing the need for the building expansion and new teacher requirements, yet the huge ESL parent population is what spear-headed the campaign to pull back the tuition increase that would help pay for it all.

And I'm amazed that there wasn't a compromise made (4% instead of 5.85% maybe?) but a complete backpedal.

I shouldn't care because we won't be here, but I do.

In other news, a blast from our past... we got a notice about non-payment for my medevac. You know, the one from February 2006. The one we paid in July 2006. The one we got a notice for again in September 2006 and had an involved back and forth in e-mail to clear up the fact that we had done our part, our insurance had done its part, and the only part that had messed up was Embassy Togo in the allocation of those $10,000 worth of funds. The mess was between MED and EmbTogo. MED agreed and said we were clear.

Guess what... it's baaaaaaack. I pulled out the signed copy receipt of the funds transfer to EmbTogo, but seeing as I'd never received an "Accounts Paid" message from MED, nothing was cleared. I planned to fax the receipt with an explanation. But then I had a thought: I didn't have the e-mail thread, but did Ian? He keeps everything. I called him up and figured it wouldn't hurt to look.

And he rocks. He pulled up the November 2006 e-mails and forwarded them on to MED again, cced to all sorts of people, and MED agreed (again) that it's in Lome's hands.

After a moment of panic wondering where I'd find $10,000 I now feel like we've got, oh, another 3 or so years of peace before this comes back to annoy us again. I really need to get something in writing from MED this time.