Clustercurseword

It is too late for me to be blogging, but since I needed to log in to this account to respond to a comment (hi Bryna!) I figured I should give a quick update on the clustercurseword that is Sabrina's relationship with the child welfare system.

School starts Monday (I hope that enough school systems start Monday that I'm not giving anything away about my location) and Sabrina has been with her dad all summer. Her birthday was earlier this week as well, so I called to wish her a happy birthday, see how she's doing, see if anyone had done ANYthing to prepare her to come back to me, make arrangements with her dad to pick her up, etc.

Sabrina has better phone skills than me and I am convinced is more polite than I am as well. What a sweetheart. Unfortunately: 1. someone (I assume dad) got her a Barbie car for her birthday so I have to do a lot to buy her love, and 2. no one had told her anything about needing to come back to my house. Nice, being the bearer of bad news.

Then I come to learn the reason why no one has told her that she would be coming back to my house: dad has done all sorts of things as if Sabrina is just with him for now and forever--enrolled her in school near his house (remember, he's in another state entirely), bought her school uniforms (I'm sorry, but any school whose uniform is a yellow top and green bottom needs to reconsider), registered her for piano lessons and another after school program--and when I tried to talk to him, he got snotty and then hung up on me.

As if that weren't bad enough, either he refuses to talk to Sabrina's social worker, or Sabrina's social worker isn't trying hard enough to reach him. So while dad kept saying (before he hung on me) "well, you need to talk to Wilma"--to which my responses were generally along the lines of "Wilma would say exactly what I am saying"--he hasn't spoken to her himself. As soon as I got off the phone with dad, I emailed Wilma, Wilma's supervisor, and the GAL (followed up with a second email after I received text messages from dad with the details of school/uniforms/after school activities and a statement that "maybe you should tell Wilma that Sabrina isn't the foster child for you") with the situation.

Guess who I did not hear from at all today? Guess who the GAL didn't hear from at all today? That's right, Wilma. The GAL spoke with the supervisor and then I spoke with the GAL. The GAL told me first that Sabrina is going to have to come back to me on Friday, which is fine although my apartment is STILL a wreck (I did finally get rid of the plants that were sitting, dead, on the dining room table when Sabrina was last here) and better for transition for Sabrina, but I don't know if the agency will ultimately agree. The GAL also told me--and this I was extremely relieved by--that the agency will have to pick Sabrina up from her dad's house and bring her to me. I expected to go myself, but after the call yesterday, I wanted to have "back up" with me to support my right to bring her to my house. And the GAL said I shouldn't have to go at all, yippee! I just need to make a list of the things that are at dad's house that Sabrina needs to bring back to my house. Like her inhalers. And the umbrella that I bought for her, and one of the two pairs of sunglasses, and the blanket I knit for her. I have no problem if things that I buy for her end up at dad's house, but I won't buy an umbrella a week or a pair of sunglasses a week just because Sabrina takes them to her dad's and then doesn't bring them back.

I still need to register Sabrina for school, and the GAL said I should hold off on enrolling her in my neighborhood school (if Sabrina goes to live with her aunt in a month or two, it does make sense--sort of mostly--for her not to have an extra school change) until we have a conversation with the social worker and her supervisor, but who knows if that's going to happen.

Even before this mess, I was talking to a friend who said I should tell the agency director about my troubles. But this friend has political clout in his job, and I'm just the local equivalent of a civil servant and have no professional relationship with the director, only with his chief of staff. So... who knows. I haven't made that decision yet.

I didn't miss Sabrina as much as I "should" have this summer, but I'll tell you what was really nice about her not being here: I didn't have to deal with the agency OR with her dad. It was nice while it lasted.

More than one kiddo?

No, not bringing another kid into the mix. But after yesterday's "conversation" with Wendy's dad, I started thinking about what would happen if Wendy and her little brother were removed from their home. (Please, oh please, let that not happen.)

Because Wendy has her little brother, none of my thinking would actually come to fruition, even in the bad situation where there was a removal.

But I started wondering: if one of Sabrina's friends needed a foster home, would mine be a good place? I should say upfront that the agency is not with it enough that I could tell anyone "hey, if there's a kid who goes to AKS Elementary, let me know." I've said that IF I decide to get my license changed to two kids, it would only be to have a sibling group. And would it be weird for two kids who know each other from school to share a bedroom?

Nevertheless, when Sabrina was falling asleep tonight, I started thinking about how I would rearrange the bedroom to have two beds. Because really, kids in pre-k don't need a 5-foot long desk.

School Choices

I'm on day three of revising a four-page document, and on my fifth-to-last day of work, so of course I'm searching out procrastination. No, this is not why I'm on my fifth-to-last day of work.

I don't recall if I've written about school before, but since the issue came up in a comment (okay, since I brought the issue up in a comment), I thought I'd write about it. It is, after all, related to what I am doing for the next five days, if not to the document that I am supposed to be working on.

My Big City has some really good public schools and a lot of really bad public schools, with a very active reform effort to improve all of the schools. We also have more school choice than is reasonable. That is, there is a very vibrant out-of-boundary lottery as well as a very large charter school community, so a parent can, theoretically, change his or her mind about what school his or her kid goes to every year. I saw that this happens, among parents who are very commited to their kids' education, despite research (that I don't know where to find at the moment) that changing schools is bad for kids' performance. I was at a community meeting where a parent was incensed that her kids' school was being closed and the kid was therefore going to have to go somewhere new. Her son was in kindergarten and in his third school. (I should note that the new school was three blocks away and would have the same teachers, along with others, just not the same building.)

All this is to say:
1. A foster kid who changes schools with a new placement isn't necessarily experiencing more school disruptions than a kid who has lived in the same house his or her entire life. (Not that this justifies changing schools regularly.)
2. Our school system is set up to accommodate students who go to school outside of their neighborhood.

The school placement of a foster kid is the decision of the social worker. I understand that as a foster parent I won't have the authority to make decisions in this area. However, I am absolutely certain that if a foster parent said "I won't drive little Shaniqua to her current school" (or "I won't take little Shaniqua on the bus to her current school") that the social worker would say "fine, she'll go to your neighborhood school."

Which makes me think that I will have at least some say in the matter.

It happens that my neighborhood school is one of the good ones. And that it is very likely that whatever neighborhood school my foster kiddos are coming from, it won't be as good as mine. But that doesn't necessarily mean that switching schools will be the best decision in every case. I do think that by living where I do, with a good neighborhood school, the decision about school placement will be more difficult.

Yet I feel like once again I am going to be the exception, allowing the social worker to prioritize stability when that is the best option even when the school itself is worse, when my suspicion is that most foster parents in my city won't make the sacrifice to take their foster kids to a school in another part of the city, even when the schools are equally poor and stability is the only thing going for their education.

[And yet it has been over a year and I'm still not licensed. Why?]