“Hi, Dad. I can’t believe it. I have to send a letter to the parents of each student in my class to let them know I’m retaining their child. The principal wrote the letter, but I have to make copies and sign it. It’s awful! ‘Dear Parents, this is to inform you that your child will not be passed to third grade, so that the school can provide them with additional time to meet the challenging curriculum of Kettle Creek Elementary.’ Ridiculous.”
She pressed the STOP button. Staring at the recorder, Colleen gave up on the idea of talking it out with her father. He would never get the tape in time to give her advice. She was just talking to herself. What was the point?
Big, fat, quiet tears rolled down her cheeks and dripped onto the tape player.
Where are those cigarettes? Damn! Of all the weekends for Miguel to be away on maneuvers! Who can I talk to? Evelyn?
Evelyn had the same problem she did because she had the below-level 3C class. No phone meant having to drive to the pay phone or using the one in their landlord’s house. And she didn’t want anyone to overhear what she was saying. She found the carton of Marlboros. The last pack. Colleen chain-smoked until the surge of nicotine soothed her anxiety.
She considered her options: write the letters or don’t write the letters. If she sent the letters, she was ignoring the success and progress of the year. If she didn’t send them, would it matter? She had no authority to pass her students on to third grade. Worse, she had no power. Send the letter. It was the only way to expose how unfair the decision was. She’d have to rely on her students’ parents to do something.
Colleen didn’t have a typewriter in the trailer. She would have to type the letter at school. Thinking about asking the secretary if she could use her typewriter changed her mind. Colleen didn’t want to sit at that woman’s desk. It would be like sitting in a fishbowl. She imagined the unfriendly secretary watching her and knew that she would only make mistake after mistake, wasting the dittos, pulling the ditto master out of the typewriter, and getting purple ink all over her hands. Colleen decided she would just have to write it carefully by hand onto the master. The more she thought through the steps, the clearer her plan got. It would have to be in cursive and sealed in an envelope. The children would be able to read it if she typed it.
Yes! Many of them will be able to read it! Yet the principal didn’t even want to know about them.
After lunch on Monday, Colleen made copies of her handwritten letter, stuffed the envelopes, and addressed each one. At the end of the day, she inserted each letter into the folders she used to send homework and school notices home.
“Miz Rodriguez, why are we bringing letters home? Is that my report card?”
Of course Jarrod would be worried about a letter going home.
“No, Jarrod, it’s a special notice for your parents. Report cards go home next week.”
“I was worried, Miz Rodriguez. You always show us our report cards first. My mama doesn’t like bad news. I want to see it before she does.”
“You will, Jarrod, next week.”
As Colleen lined up the students and took them out to the bus lines, she wondered how his mother and all the parents would react.
The report cards are worthless, and so am I.