Get on Back to School

Lyric courtesy of Jimmy Buffet and Dan Fogelberg from Domino College

There are some things I love about living in a place like Effingham County. I love the small-town atmosphere. I love how my hair dresser knows a really good local place to get a sandwich, and how they know a really good local place to get mulch for my garden. Everyone knows everyone, and everyone looks out for everyone, in a very down home, "Hey, I brought y'all some fresh biscuits" manner.

There are also some things I don't like. The schools here are fabulous, which means everyone is moving to this area to take advantage of the cheap land and good schools (we're part of that group), but the schools aren't ready for it. Not by a long shot. So much so, that my daughter was on a waiting list three months ago for a slot in the state funded free public pre-kindergarten program, and was still number eleven on the list yesterday as school started.

To say I was in a panic would be putting it mildly.

Ray and I spent most of yesterday calling every state funded program we could find in the county, and everyone had waiting lists a mile long. I looked at churches, but most of the ones in the area that we could afford to pay for were way too conservative for us. But finally, some of those phone calls paid off.

Ray called a bunch of places listed in the local phone book. Most of the day-cares and private pre-kindergartens had been put out of work by the elementary schools getting into the pre-k business. One phone number led to a woman who used to work at a pre-school in Springfield, up the highway about ten miles or so from where we live. She just happened to have the number of a woman whose daughter was opening a brand new state funded pre-school in Old Guyton, not far from where we are. So we called the woman, who gave us her daughter's cell number, which went to voice mail, but had the number of her new pre-school listed. And we hit the jackpot. They had three slots left open.

The building isn't much to look at. It's an old county building across the street from the Guyton Volunteer Fire Department, and half a block up from the county sheriff's building in town. But the folks were nice, and the Four Year Old loved the classroom, even if they hadn't finished putting everything up yet.

And so now she has a place to belong. She's one of only six girls in two pre-kindergarten classes. Truthfully, she's probably not going to learn anything academic from her new school. She can already read, she can print simple sentences, she knows some addition and subtraction, and her multiplication tables. But she's going to learn about dealing with other kids, which makes me happy.

And all because a woman knew a woman who had a daughter with a business. I love Effingham County.