Happy Easter and Team Smith Update!

Happy Easter!

The girls still love an easter basket. As do I :-) My momma came through with candy and target giftcards! Lol. We also did an egg hunt in the front yard. Instead of candy, the eggs had coins and a few dollar bills. Then Savvy asked what this had to do with Easter? There is a really great Rick Steves touring Europe episode that goes into great detail about all the symbols and traditions and why and how they are celebrated in different parts of the world. And then Savvy had more questions at church this morning! Matt's favorite was, "why do we have seats in church if we're not going to use them?" It is such a gift to see her curiosty grow and interest blossom...

Team Smith Update

Last year Cass expressed intreset in leaving her school (7th-12th regional school) and attending Miss Halls, an all girls boarding/day school in Pittsfield. Y'all can imagine my reaction: full of bias and confusion...knowing very little about the new england boarding school culture...refusal to pay for school, that's what public school is for! 

But her reasons were strong.

• Lack of accountability with multiple blatantly racist events, enacted by students and teachers in her classroom either directly against her, or indirectly through here friend group. I won't go into details, but y'all know we have been deep in conversations and action to try and address the stand alone incidents and the wide systemic problems that allow them to continue unchecked.
• Miss Halls is like college in rigor and schedule and activities. Has a strong social justice culture. The deans look like her. The students look like her. Who knew the private boarding school would be significantly more diverse than the public school in every way?

The push and pull factors at play were enough to make us give her request serious consideration. We did the whole thing: tours, open house days, meet the teachers, student led online sessions, and the application. It was seriously just like applying to college! She got reference letters, we did their version of the fafsa. She completed an interview and by December all of our application was in. Decisions came out in March. While we were waiting we had a serious conversation about the costs.

We had two options. We could pull from my retirement, I've been working since I was 14 and been with TIAA almost that entire time. Or, Matt could get a full time job. He started applying to jobs in the area and I talked with a retirement rep about the taxes and fees. And we also jokingly told Cass if we used those funds now, she'd be taking care of us later! Lol. 

Matt was a finalist in several interviews, and thanks be to God, happened to be offered a position as Assistant Dean of Students at Miss Halls! That meant if Cass got in, it would be free tuition. It also meant if she didn't get in, we could explore some other options in the area.

Cass got in! Yay! Accepted students day was last week, and she is super excited about next year. She is sad to leave her friends, but there have been two more bias incidents in the last week that really solidified her want to be in a school with administrators and staff who would hold students accountable for hateful behavior and put their stated values of equity and inclusion into real action.  In the meantime, Savvy will finish 6th grade next year at her current elementary school, then transition to the regional school. Matt and I will continue to actively work with this school district to push them to do and be better, but honestly, these issues existed long before we got here and will probably persist long after we leave. That's not pessimism, that's a survival instinct that helps us remember to do good work while we're here, and remember that we're only a small part of a much larger community of people and wider timeline of advocacy.

So, we are celebrating! And transitioning. It has been a glorious 18 months of Matt being at home. He started working at Miss Halls Feb 1 and there are things I just plain forgot how to do! Ha! Jumping back into a more shared responsibility for Team Smith operations is still an adjustment for everyone. The kids can't do all the activties; our schedules just aren't flexible enough to drive them all over the place any day of the week. We have to be intentional with our check ins and grocery shopping. Porkchop is loving it- Miss Halls is super dog frienhdly and he gets to hang out in Matt's office. 

Other fun stuff....

Grandpa John came to visit! Matt unfortunately got sick and could not spend much time with us, but we had a pretty good time, I think! 

Our friend Idonas stayed with us for one night on his roadtrip. It was fun to catch up! And I went to a conference for work.

And Cassidy organized and ran a clothing drive at her school as part of her volunteer work with Project 351.

That's it for us for now. It's April and all of the end of the school year things are happening. We hope everyone's spring brings hope, rejuvenation, and excitement for the summer! 

Happy Easter, Happy Passover, Ramadan Mubarak and Love from Team Smith!