Mendolonium

Long-time blog readers will recall the saga of finding an appropriate elementary school in Pasadena, California.  After, quite literally, years of school tours, speaking with other parents, and applying for schools and lotteries we choose a small, private, secular elementary school, Friends Western School (FWS), near our home that was organized as a parent cooperative.  As a cooperative the school is a non-profit corporation, chartered by the parents, run by a parent board of directors, and all functions other than teaching are done by the parents  (the teachers are paid, credentialed teachers).

Well, after all that we still completely and utterly screwed up the decision on where to send Thomas to school.  The wheels didn’t just come off of the [school] bus, the damned bus exploded and went up in flames.

Long story, short:

Two weeks before the start of the current (2012-2013) school year, we were forced out of FWS and Thomas is now repeating kindergarten at another local private school.

Long story, long:

Thomas enjoyed his time at FWS last year and was excited to go to school every day.  He was happy there and his happiness and comfort with a school had been paramount among my concerns.  During our time at FWS we saw a number of things which gave us some concern.  We expected this – it was a relatively new school (in its second year as a parent cooperative) and we knew that there would be growing pains as well as a lot of time required by all the parents to make it work.  The concerns started relatively small, the school day NEVER started on time; an issue we raised that the school leadership was dismissive of.  Fine, we figured we would bring it up again at a later time.  Then we participated in the school’s annual fundraiser; a huge amount of work that raised very little money – most of it from the parents themselves.  We suggested a couple of ideas for improving the net payoff of the fundraiser.  They were dismissed.  Fine.  Two families abruptly left the school.  When I asked for an explanation we were told that the details were confidential.  I contacted the family involved and they had a very different story to tell.  We began to worry a bit.  We were told by another parent that we were nominated to be elected to the school board, yet the person in charge of nominations never informed us.  Odd, but with three kids we didn’t have time to serve on the board anyway.  Three more families told us that they were leaving the school.  We wondered if the school would be able to stay afloat.  Over the summer our concerns grew as we saw the school struggle with signing a lease for the school campus.  We decided that we were still committed to FWS for the 2012-2013 school year, but started, sadly, to discuss if we would need another option for the following (2013 – 2014) school year.

Then, two weeks before school started Jeff came home from a school work day and told me that he had heard, in casual conversation with a teacher, that every other Friday would be an early dismissal so that the teachers could have paid planning time; there was also some plan to have parent-supervised “free-play” so that other parents who could not pick up their children at the early time would have free childcare.  I was puttering around the internet when Jeff said this and I closed my laptop and said, “What the hell?”   I tried to make sense of it;  our parent cooperative school had made a major decision about the school day – shaving 6% of the instructional time off of the year without consulting or even informing all the parents.  That couldn’t be right.  We were working parents with three other young children.  Our lives are scheduled down to 15 minute increments.  A change such of this would wreak havoc with our carefully planned schedule.  There was no way I was comfortable with Thomas spending three hours in “free” play watched by some unspecified group of parents.  I worried he wasn’t getting enough academics as it was – I certainly didn’t want him to get less!  I got very angry but hoped that somehow this was all a misunderstanding.  I trusted this school to take good care of my child. I paid this school a lot of money to do so.   At the very least I had a right to know who was supervising my child and when and I had a right to know that information as soon as it was available.

I put myself in the shoes of the other parents; many of whom did not yet know about this information.  I felt strongly that we all had a right to know and so I posted for all parents to see on our school’s online forum the gist of what I knew, along with the statement that I was very upset over how this issue was handled.  I expected a discussion of the decision would follow.  What I didn’t expect was to be told to stop talking.   But that’s exactly what happened.  I was told not to post about this issue in full view of the entire school.  That I should only be discussing this issue – any issue- with the board.  That other parents did not have the right to know. We were told specifically that the board was concerned about how this “made the school look to new parents” and that we were “poisoning the waters” of the cooperative.

Well you can imagine how well I took that.

We spoke both via phone and in person with members of the board and our conversations raised more questions.  It is still not clear to us who made the decision (we know that it was not all the members of the current board) and when the decision was planned to be communicated to the parents.  I received patronizing and classist statements about how “many families want to and are able to pick up their child early”  and that “for you working parents” free “childcare” (the supervised free play) was going to be arranged.  I felt as if I was being spoken to as benveloent dictator speaks to a mere peon.  I asked what was to stop them from making unilateral decisions in the future.  I was told that I should trust them and that they would “always have our best interests at heart”.  There was no choice but to leave the school.  I could not trust them to take care of my son.

We consider what was done to be a huge breech of trust and a breech of contract.  Just as we scrupulously honored our contract to attend membership meetings, volunteer at the school, and pay tuition we expected that the school should honor its obligation to provide our child with the instructional time, from credentialed teachers, that was agreed upon when we joined the school.  That is clearly not the case.  In fact, when we raised this issue, we were told by the board that their was no such guarantee.  Quoting directly from an email we received from the FWS board: “The tuition contract does not state that children will receive instruction from a credentialed teacher from 8:30-3 Monday through Friday.”  I laughed at the absurdity of that email.  No private school contract I have ever read says such a thing – but it is implied.  I can only imagine that if I signed a contract to purchase a house, did a walk through, and then when I actually got the keys to the house found that 6% of the house had been removed, that might be a breech of contract.  It is no different with a school contract.

In the midst of all of this I decided to organize Thomas’ schoolwork from kindergarten.  I like to save examples of his work and artwork and so I laid everything out chronologically before putting it in scrapbook.  When I did so it shocked me to see that Thomas’ writing had not improved whatsoever during his five months at FWS.  Over this summer we also noticed that Thomas’ math skills had regressed when we saw him counting on his fingers.  I asked him where he learned to count that way and he replied “school”.  I was saddened to see my son who could do addition, subtraction, and even simple multiplication and division in his head revert to preforming simple addition and subtraction with his fingers.  There was enough to do at FWS that Thomas wasn’t bored so we never realized the extent to witch the academics were lacking.  But it is now clear that he was never challenged there.

Other than food allergies and potentially devastating prenatal diagnoses, this incident has been the single most stressful incident of parenting yet.  We were very, very lucky to find a last minute placement for Thomas in a fantastic local private school (of course more expensive).  I called about public school but we did not make it to the top of the waitlist for the local public charter school and our neighborhood public school is absolutely abysmal – there is no way in hell I would send my child there.  Given our new school’s very rigorous academic standards and September 1st cutoff date for kindergarten (meaning that Thomas would have been the youngest 1st grader by over 2 months) we decided to consider our time at FWS to be pre-K and have Thomas spend this year in kindergarten.  A week and a half into the new school year Thomas is thriving and seems well-suited to his role as one of the older, more mature kindergarteners.  The academic damage will be undone.  But I can’t help but still feel like a failure.    I did everything I possibly could to find a good school for my son and yet it still wasn’t enough.  As someone who moved around a lot as child it breaks my heart to know that Thomas will probably attend at least three elementary schools now (we will probably not be able to afford three kids in private school and will eventually move to another, better school district).  I had wanted so badly to give him a stable school experience.  I never, ever thought that sending my son to kindergarten would be such an ordeal.  We will move beyond this and we already feel that the new school is much better place than FWS was.  But we will be dealing the consequences for some time to come.  It will take months for Thomas to make new friends.  We had to buy a second car because the new school is too far away to bike.  I have had to increase my hours at work.  Sometimes being a grown-up is damned hard.

Newsflash:  When you give women more paid maternity leave they are less likely to leave their jobs.

A recent New York Times article:  In Google’s Inner Circle, a Falling Number of Women highlighted Google’s efforts to hire and retain female employees.  In appropriate Google-style, Google collected data on the specific circumstances of women’s employment and found that:

…Google was losing women was after they had babies. The attrition rate for postpartum women was twice that for other employees. In response, Google lengthened maternity leave to five months from three and changed it from partial pay to full pay. Attrition decreased by 50 percent.

Are we really surprised by this?  I think that most people, men and women, parents and those without children alike, recognize that having a new child is challenging and expensive, filled with sleepless nights and new expenditures. What society has failed to do is translate that recognition into logical, evidence-based policies for maternity and family leave. Google chose to create a corporate “culture”, that showed that they valued their employees who were working mothers. Of course, only relatively large companies can afford such large expenditures.  This is why we should not be relying on the corporate world to offer reasonable maternity leaves.  Although I generally lean towards a viewpoint of minimizing government, this is an area where government needs to step in.  A quick primer:  in the United States maternity leave is determined on a state-by-state and company-by-company basis.  Most states have no right to paid maternity leave whatsoever and even those states that do grant a paid leave restrict such legislation based on the size of the company (i.e., you are shit out of luck if you work for a small business).   In those cases where “maternity leave” is mandated it is generally handled as a disability leave.  The idea that you declare a woman “disabled” at the same time they are responsible for taking care of a brand new person is ridiculous.  I can’t think of a time in my life when I have needed to me more able than when caring for a new baby.  Not to mention how unfair a system based on “disability” is to adoptive parents who have the same need to bond with their new baby and need to help the new child adjust to a new family.  California actually has the most progressive family leave policies in the country.  As an employee in California working for a company with 50 or more employees I was entitled to six weeks post-birth maternity “disability” leave at partial pay, paid by the state from state disability insurance.  I was also entitled to an additional six weeks of California paid family leave paid at the same rate as disability.  Fathers are entitled to this same family leave.  During those twelve total weeks my job was protected.   I have the good fortune to work for a company that supplements all disability pay – whether for maternity leave or a heart attack or a broken leg – and thus received my full salary for six weeks after the birth.   I am further lucky to work at a company which has a corporate culture that is more conducive to family life.  While I didn’t enjoy five months of paid maternity leave, my company already had a long-standing history of allowing unpaid personal leaves of absence and for working party time – for non-parents and parents alike.  Had I had to return to work six or twelve weeks after the birth, I would have either have been a miserable, exhausted, unproductive, breastfeeding failure or quit and been one of those women who was “lost” after having a baby.   I was simply not capable of being an effective mother and an effective employee after such a short period of time.

I get very frustrated when I hear yet another political speech encouraging more women to pursue college degrees and technical careers in math and science.  It is disingenuous to encourage women to pursue these goals but completely fail to support them when they get there.  The fact is that most women are going to become mothers.   Women are going to be the ones getting pregnant and giving birth to babies.  Women are going to be the ones feeding the babies.   I don’t see this in and of itself as a burden, I actually look at my ability to grow and nurture a baby as a privilege.  The burden comes when our society places expectations on women that are incompatible with both being a working woman and a healthy mother.

I applaud Google for increasing paid maternity leave for its employees.  Our government could choose to make such leave a reality for every working mother.   We should not have to rely on the benevolence of large corporations to show a working woman is truly valued in our society.

Doe, a deer, a female deer.

Re, a drop of golden sun.

Mi, a name, I call myself.

Fa, a long, long way to run.

So, a needle pulling thread.

La, a note to follow so.

Ti, a drink with jam and bread…

For a long time I have wanted to take my passion for food preservation and baking and do something more with it; more than inundating my little family with desserts.  As delicious as homemade preserves are there is only so much pickle relish and raspberry jam a family of five can eat.  Last spring we were singing one of our endless rounds of “Do Re Mi” and the line about “jam and bread” kept running through my head.  And so Jam and Bread was born.

In uncharacteristic fashion, I didn’t start Jam and Bread with every detail well thought out, I didn’t have a business plan.  I simply had a passion and a simple maxim that the jam and bread that I sold needed to be profitable and pay me at least minimum wage for my time.  In my very limited “free” time over the past few months I have managed to do just that.  I’ve sold a couple of hundred jars of preserves, dozens of loaves of bread, and even started to get orders for made-to-order special occasion baked goods.    Now I am ready to expand.  I have visions of a “bread CSA” wherein customers would sign up to pay a fixed amount for a weekly delivery of seasonally based breads.  I have had two retail outlets express interest in carrying my jams and there is the possibility of selling at a weekly farmers market as well.  But such expansion depends on the passage of a new California law,AB1616, The California Homemade Food Act.  You see, right now, I am selling my jam and bread on the black market.  In California all food for sale must, by law, be produced in a commercial kitchen.  Even school and church bake sales are illegal!  AB1616 aims to change that; permitting limited sales of home produced canned and baked goods.  AB1616 should land on Governor Jerry Brown’s desk late this month.  Below is the letter that I sent Governor Brown today to urge him to sign AB1616.

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Governor Brown,

I am writing to urge you to sign AB1616, The California Homemade Food Act.  I currently own and operate a small home-based business, “Jam and Bread”, selling organic preserves and baked goods.  Because California currently lacks a “cottage food law” such as AB1616 I am forced to operate the business outside of a legal framework.

In order to operate as a licensed business, paying taxes and hiring employees, I would need to produce all of my food products in a commercial kitchen; an option that is simply cost-probative for a very small, part-time business.  Not only does the lack of a cottage food law such as AB1616 force me to operate on the black market, but its absence has significantly hindered the expansion of my business.  Over the past six months a number of my customers who own local retail outlets, have asked if they might be able to sell Jam and Bread’s preserves at their stores.  In addition, a local farmers market has offered a space for Jam and Bread to sell my preserves and baked goods.  While I would love to accommodate their requests, such sales would currently be illegal, and thus I cannot expand my business – even with willing customers.

The passage of AB1616 benefits not only the small entrepreneurs of California, but also California farmers – from whom we source raw ingredients, our neighbors – who gain access to local, healthy affordable food, and indeed all California citizens – through the generation of jobs and tax revenues.  AB1616 is patterned after “cottage food laws” enacted in other states.  AB1616 would only permit the sale of low-risk foods (such as jams and baked goods).  Similar laws enacted in more than 30 states have not resulted in a single case of food-borne illness.

In today’s climate of economic insecurity small food based businesses can help to keep a family afloat and keep a community food secure.  On behalf of the 400 members of the Los Angeles Bread Bakers and the thousands of home bakers across California, I strongly urge you to sign AB1616, The California Homemade Food Act.  And if you’re ever in Pasadena I would be happy to present you with a legally produced loaf of organic bread and jar of jam.

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And if any of you lovely blog readers would like to support Jam and Bread please consider sending Governor Brown a letter yourself.  I’ll owe you a cupcake!

I last spoke with my grandmother, my mother’s mother, the year before I had children.  My grandmother, who had suffered from dementia for years, sat next to me on a couch as I explained to her who I was.  Her eyes lit up as she recognized that I was Gina, the same girl with the dark brown eyes and long eyelashes, that she remembered as a baby.  She asked about whether I was married and had any children.  I introduced her to Jeff and told her, that we didn’t have any children yet but that they were definitely in our future.  She recounted, proudly, to me the names of her own five children, adding softly “and one that was still born”.  Then she added emphatically, “And I nursed all of them.  You be sure you nurse your babies.”

I never realized how fortunate I was to come from an unbroken maternal line of mothers, grandmothers, and beyond who had nursed their babies.  My mother breastfed all of us and being six years older than my sister I can distinctly recall my mother settling down on the couch to nurse rambunctious little baby Sara.  I remember asking my mother how nursing worked, why she would switch the baby from one side to another and how she knew when the baby had had enough.  My mother-in-law too spoke fondly of nursing her babies and expressed that the time went too quickly.  Once we began to plan seriously for having children I researched the best place to give birth, what car seat to buy, infant and child brain development; but I never gave any thought to whether or not I would nurse and the benefits of breastfeeding.  I didn’t need to.  For me, nursing my babies wasn’t a decision I made consciously, but simply a normal part of being a mother.

Nursing in public has been a prominent topic in the media over the past few months.  A mother in was kicked out of a Target store for nursing her infant.  Locally, a mother at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was told to cover up or stop nursing her daughter.  (The height of irony given that the museum displays multiple works of art depicting nudity.)  And then there was the infamous magazine cover.

I might have grown up in a family where nursing was normal,  but I still remember the stress of those first few times nursing a baby in public.  One the first times was when Thomas was about three weeks old.  I hadn’t been out of the house but twice in those three weeks and I was going crazy.  Thomas – in the fine tradition of all Mendolo children – hated the car seat and I couldn’t bear to put him in it to go anywhere.  After I dissolved into a flood of tears one afternoon, Jeff took charge of my hormonal self and said that we were going to walk to Target.  We made the walk to and through the store without incident but on the way home the baby began to cry.  A mile from our house, .  surrounded by office buildings, a gas station, and a dry cleaners there was only one thing that would soothe my colicky baby when he cried.  Suddenly nervous and flustered, hot and sweaty, I sat on a low concrete wall dividing a grocery store parking lot from the sidewalk and nursed at a very busy intersection – at rush hour.  I was so anxious that I had trouble getting a good flow of milk which only made Thomas cry harder.  I didn’t want to be there nursing for all of Pasadena to see, so I attempted put a blanket over myself but trying to cover up only added to our frustration.  Parenthood requires you to do lots of things you don’t want to do and after nearly coming to tears myself, I womaned up, put my feet up on the stroller, handed the blanket to Jeff, and nursed my nearly inconsolable little baby.  As I relaxed, he drank and drank, eventually falling into milk-drunk stupor, and all was well.  Five and half years and three children later I have now, of course, nursed in public more times than I can keep track of:  countless times in Target alone, all over the Happiest Place on Earth, walking around the grocery store, with a baby in a sling, on the beach, at the mall, at the park, sitting on various sidewalks throughout the city, in restaurants, during toddler music classes, while watching Theo do gymnastics, on trains and airplanes.  And I while I always make an effort to nurse discretely, often wearing two shirts to expose the minimum amount of skin, I never, ever, nurse with a cover or a blanket.  Not because I am an exhibitionist but because I am a mother with a hungry baby and a mother nursing her baby is normal.

I can’t decide whether or not to be pleased by all the media coverage of public nursing – hoping the coverage will remind more people that breastfeeding is normal and encourage more nursing mothers – or dismayed that it is even a newsworthy topic at all. To me it’s a little bit like having a debate on breathing in public.  We should remember that in the absence of physical issues a new mother will produce milk and lactation will begin – nursing a baby is a normal, necessary function.  When people grow up in an environment where they see mothers nursing tiny babies every hour, mothers nursing a hungry six month old who doesn’t yet eat anything else, mothers soothing a tired toddler – both at home and in public – we normalize nursing better than any media attention ever could.  When people are exposed to the full spectrum of nursing they understand,  intrinsically, that babies can’t be made to nurse only when “in private” and the debate about public nursing ceases to exist.    I am lucky that I grew up and live in an environment where breastfeeding is normal and expected.  I can’t give that environment to every new mother, but I can keep sitting down, putting my child to my breast, and feeding her – whenever and wherever she needs.