Change is in the air

Fall has fully arrived in the Tennessee Valley now!  We have had several frosts (at least in my neighborhood) and nights have been quite chilly with comfortable days.  This is truly a spectacular time of year with the temps and the display of color that abounds in nature right now.

But that is not the only change going on in town.  Rumors have been flying with regards to the combination of Lee High School and New Century into the new high school that is being built.  Until yesterday, the new school carried the name Lee High School above its entrance but now that has been removed.  What name will go there is now up in the air, much to the annoyance of alumni and friends of Lee.

A parent meeting was held Tuesday night at New Century with our superintendent in attendance.  This is where the news was announced that New Century would be moving into the new building and that the two schools would become one with a new name.  It didn't take long for the trouble to be stirred up on FB!

I think this merger could be a very good thing for both schools but Dr. Wardynski could have handled this news in a much better fashion.  The Lee faculty,parents and students should have received this news from Dr. Wardynski at the same time the New Century school did.  Beginning with a joint meeting and then individual meetings to address concerns would have made this much easier on the two communities.

Now Lee students and parent plan to swarm the board meeting tonight to air their complaints.  Sit-ins have been planned.  Petitions are floating around.  This does not bode well for the new school.

At this point, it seems a division has been created over who will have charge rather than a united community that can do so much more.  Surely building a consensus from the beginning rather than dividing would have been better.  I hope Dr. Wardynski rectifies this mistake quickly.

From earlier posts you may know that I live in the Lee district but chose not to send my oldest child there because I was not confident that she would get what she needed to continue her education.  We chose to send her to Columbia and the IB program there.  It is a long drive from my home but, she is thriving in the IB program and I cannot imagine a better choice for her.

My next child will be entering high school in 2012 and what school he attends is still to be decided.  New Century was an option I was willing to consider for him but that might not be an option now.  I am going to be watching to see how this merger takes shape.  I certainly would not want to send him in to an environment that seems quite hostile at this point.

Blessings

We were blessed this weekend to have Dr. Darrell Guder at our church for the Kyser Lecture Series.  I got to hear him all 3 times though the first two were essentially the same service.  Dr Guder is a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and an authority on mission and ecumnical theology.  The afternoon lecture has truly left me thinking.

Dr. Guder spoke about life in a post Christendom world.  This world can be very dangerous and full of stress.  He argued that the time of Christendom really began to disintegrate with the beginning of the first World War when Christian kings attacked each other in what would be a the worst war the world had seen.  We now see the rise of a new religion called Secularism.  This has brought about the absence of prayer in school and pushing out of God from our public lives.

Then Dr.Guder became more specific in talking about the Presbyterian church and particularly the church in the US.  He used scripture to point out the way early Christians made decisions.  They would gather, pray, discuss, pray and await a concensus created by the Holy Spirit.  He argued that our downfall might well be in our system of voting our way to decisions.  I think there is much to be considered in this argument.

I think waiting on the Holy Spirit and God's timing might be one of the most difficult jobs a Christian has.