Today we had a lovely lunch meal with our shul president and his wife.  They had us over to their house three years ago, and it took me until now to get around to inviting them!  They are such nice people, and it was an absolute pleasure to have them.

One of the many things we discussed was my very tentative plans for my ds15 for the coming year.  We have tentative plans for my dd14 that she feels good about, assuming the program that she’s interested will accept her in the fall even though she’s so young.  If they won’t take her now, we’ll either wait another year until they will or reassess and make another plan.  But ds is a little harder.  He’d like to go to yeshiva when he’s 18, which we’re supportive of, but it’s important to us that he has a solid way to support a family when he’s married.  So I’d like him to be able to use the next couple of years to work towards a long term plan, but all the ideas I’ve come up with have left me unenthusiastic.  This has been something I’ve spent a lot of mental energy on, but haven’t gotten too close to making any decisions.  I’ve looked into trade schools, apprenticeships, community college options, dual enrollment choices, and spoken with him about some career choices.  And so far none of them match his interests, learning style, or long term goals – so far accounting is the main option and a lukewarm choice.  I told my dh that he needs to get involved in actively thinking about this because it’s too much for me to figure out on my own! 🙂

The husband has a personality and learning style similar to my son, so he right away understood what I was expressing about what we were looking for and my concerns about a typical college path for him (very bright, hands on, motivated independent learner but not academic in the classroom – which is why I’m looking for alternatives to the typical college path).  He came up with a possible apprenticeship option and offered to call the person involved, and also thought of an idea for a short term work position for him.  Ds thought both of them were interesting.  Because it was Shabbos, we didn’t discuss any of this in detail, but I’ll follow up in the next couple of days and see what’s a possibility for ds. 

Speaking with them made me think how important networking and speaking to others is, because they have other experiences and ideas that I wouldn’t have considered.   That sounds obvious, but I haven’t really been speaking with people about this. 

We also discussed our community initiative to keep charity dollars in the community, with a certain amount going to the schools. I was initially positive about this, until I saw that a large percentage of the money being kept in the community was expected to be allocated to the schools.  I won’t make that kind of commitment – I gladly will allot the vast portion of our maaser (tithe)  money to our community (and already do), but there are causes much closer to my heart than the local schools.  Actually, they are almost at the bottom of my list. 

Anyway, the husband had the same feeling about this initiative that I did – that there’s no discussion about new ways to approach the financial crisis that the schools are experiencing.  Calls for people in the community to give more money aren’t going to be very effective, in my opinion – I don’t think that the money is sitting around and waiting to be allocated to the schools.  But it seems no one wants to take an honest look at what the situation is, and to realize that only creative and new ways of thinking about it are going to change the status quo. 

It reminds me of when a local teen died in a car accident this past summer, and there was so much talk about what the schools could do to help kids who were feeling disenfranchised by the school system. But when I asked one of the leading rabbis who was involved in all this some specific questions about what was being done, he told me that suggestions like mine were too radical to be considered.  Maybe something has happened as a result, but whatever it was, it wasn’t big enough to be noticeable by the average person.  All the talk then was just more of the same old, same old, and now I’m sensing the same dynamic.   

But this doesn’t bother me very much, because I don’t expect the changes to come from the top.  Generally I think they have to maintain the communal equilibrium and are forced to make very small changes – that’s the most they can do because they can’t throw big changes onto the community. I believe that real change can only come from the bottom up, one family at a time.  That’s why all of this ties into my thoughts about my ds right now.  Every time one family makes a choice that works effectively for them – like homeschooling, teaching their children life skills, etc – that indirectly has an effect.  And it’s when there are enough people who are willing to do what they need to do, regardless of if it’s what everyone else is doing, that the financial situation the schools are faced with will be resolved. 

Avivah