Stomach Knots

This has been an interesting day so far. My mind is heavy with thoughts. They’re coming from everywhere but they’re all ending up in the exact same place: where should we send the baby girl to pre-school. The pre-school issue is just a loose thread of my sanity that I can’t help pulling and it’s unraveling everything. Actually, I’m not really worried about the pre-school. I’m going to be happy with whichever one we choose. There’s no bad decision to be made. My anxiety starts two years down the road when we have to choose an elementary school. My experience as a mentor at West Riverside, our tour of RPDS, and Senate Bill 6 have brought into sharp focus for me that I cannot send LMJ to a Duval County public school. But I also desperately don’t want to send her to RPDS. RPDS is everything we want in an elementary school with one massive exception: its borderline unconscionable monochromatic nature. I’d be surprised if 90% of the student body isn’t related three generations removed and most of the teachers are alumni (cue the banjos). I don’t want LMJ being the one funny looking kid throughout elementary school. One of three in a class is fine but she can’t be alone. It’s 2010 for crying out loud. My anxiety was magnified by reading the comments about Ron Littlepage’s take on Senate Bill 6. That’s a thousand percent my fault, and worse, it sent me stat searching for teacher salaries just to prove a point (I didn’t comment on the Times-Union page). On average Georgia pays $1,000 more than Florida to start and jumps 42% over ten years as opposed to Florida’s 30% jump over that period. I also looked at a stat called “salary comfort index” which compares the average salary to the average cost of living. Georgia is 3rd in the nation. Florida is 26th. This is before the What Have You Done For Me Lately To Make My Pimp’s Brother Neil Rich(er) bill erodes job security and morale. Atlanta is full of families that look like mine. Leaving Jacksonville hasn’t entered the transom of my mind in fifteen years, but now I’m actively considering it for LMJ’s future. Although there are a myriad – a plethora, if you will – of other factors, I can’t come up with a concrete downside for her. Leaving town is an absolute last ditch effort like jumping off the Titanic, and while the hull hasn’t been breached we’re scraping the iceberg.