Which Tragedy is it Today?

All our area schools are closed tomorrow because of the volume of threats of violence following the Oxford High School shooting this week. Dozens of schools here in Michigan were shut down today. Like was experienced in Webster Groves, MO students in Ann Arbor were hearing rumors and left school terrified in the middle of the day. Tomorrow, they’ve determine the threat level to be high enough to cancel all school for 16,000+ students K-12.

I had already kept my boys home this week because the case numbers here Ann Arbor are the highest they’ve been for the whole pandemic. We keep getting positive case notices from the schools. They got their second shot on Monday and I wanted them to build more immunity before returning next week. Eloise returned today because it was the end of a term before a new one started tomorrow.

The days before Thanksgiving school had to be canceled because staffing was too thin. There were only 10 days in November that my kids were in school.

I have so much empathy for families and teachers everywhere. We practice stretching our patience every single day to flex and roll with these times and extend Grace and appreciation for the impossible job our educators have.

And man, these kids…how is this the life we are giving them.

“Kids, there is no school tomorrow.”

“Shut down because of cases?”

“No.”

“Not enough teachers?”

“No.”

“What?”

“Too many shooting threats.”

“Oh. Ok. That’s sad. I was excited to get my new schedule.”

It’s a special kind of horror being a parent right now.

I had carefully weighed my options earlier this week and talked with Eloise about the threats to Roe before I understood we’d be deep in the throws of a shooting/terrorism conversation too.

This is what we’ve collectively chosen. It doesn’t have to be like this.

** image comes from this blog post