Mercurious Situation

It has became a common perception that a phone call, any phone call, that occurs before normal people are up and about is never expected to be good. It is because of these tragic circumstances that anytime my phone rings before dawn my heart skips a beat or two before the phone rings twice. Such was the situation last Friday at 6:00 am as I was preparing to leave my apartment and venture forth to teach the apathetic youth of our day. (I should add that 6:00 is an hour later than I usually leave for work, so I was feeling well rested.) Despite the perceived futility of my efforts I was in good spirits. My lessons for the rest of the week were completed and copied and I was counting on a solid hour before school to grade quizzes and update my online grade book. Just I put on my jacket to brave the 55 degree weather my phone rang. Considering that a friend had died of colon cancer in December, my former Stake President had died of a heart attack in January and another (very good) friend had just under gone his second surgery for brain cancer in 3 weeks, I was expecting the worse. It turns out the worst was bad only in as much as we, Americans, have chosen to become extreme alarmists in the face of not so gigantic problems. The problem was simple; a student at the high school had obtained several ounces of mercury from an unknown source and had been playing with it in several locations around the school. It was not discovered until the student had contaminated half his neighborhood with the mercury.

The school was closed for the next 6 days while the EPA inspected and decontaminated the entire school. Affected classrooms were completely stripped of their entire contents, hundreds of students were brought in so they could be checked for exposure, their clothing and belongings confiscated. If someone was found to be exposed, the EPA went to their home and searched there. When the school was finally opened every student was sent through checkpoints before they were allowed on campus to ensure that they had been cleared to enter campus. It took almost an hour to get the students on campus and into their classes that morning. We managed to get 2, almost, complete school days this week leaving us only one more before the state high stakes test that will determine whether or not we keep running our school or the state takes over. Not an ideal week.

Oh and did I mention that all this started on the very day that the National Accreditation team was on campus for our scheduled re-accreditation evaluation (every school has to go through ti every 5 years). Yeah, it has been an interesting month at the old job site.