2 Corinthians 5: 14-21
Jesse’s plans to retire were unknown to anyone except Jesse. We would get to work with him for another three years and it would be memorable. It started with a staff meeting where the academic teachers had decided it would be way too difficult for the school to complete the process of being NCA accredited. Jesse had the schools academic teachers working with the representatives from the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. He wanted our school to be accredited and it would be one of only 42 prison schools to be accredited. The teachers felt the reporting mechanisms the NCA wanted from the school were too encumber some. They were still going to have to do the monthly reports the MDOC school administration required and the new reporting mechanisms the NCA mandated as part of accrediting the school. They felt Jesse was wanting too much from them. The teachers wanted the NCA accreditation but they wanted to stop having to produce Lansing’s reporting requirements. They felt it was a useless duplication of data.
However, Jesse did not want to fight that battle with the MDOC school administration in Lansing and wanted them to do both. Interesting enough, the NCA agreed with the teachers. The reporting duplication seemed senseless they wrote in their final e-mail to Jesse. As a result, Jesse dropped wanting the NCA accreditation for the school. I could see for the first time he looked tired. Our school would have been the first and only prison school NCA accredited. In the scheme of things, it would have been a big accomplishment, and could have brought more funding for prison education. However, Lansing was more concerned with how many GED’s were being issued by the prison schools, and viewed the schools as successful only by the amounts of GEDs granted to their students. In the midst of this discussion we were interrupted by one of the Program Office secretaries. She had informed Jesse that he needed to contact Lansing immediately over a security breach in the GED testing process here at Macomb. Our school meeting was adjourned immediately.
The lead GED coordinator in the state, a principal at one of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula prison schools, who would latter have his own prison school embroiled in controversy, had been informed of a breach in the GED testing process. Someone at Macomb had answers to the exams and was selling them. I knew from experience our exam process was being handled by a school district and they would have to be notified as well. However, it didn’t take Jesse long to figure out that it was our county jail and not us responsible for the breach. The county jail used a different school district to administer their exams, not the one we used, and that school district was responsible for the breach at the county jail. After that fact was established, Jesse had no problem calling our state GED coordinator, and telling him off. He questioned his competency, and said that if he “payed attention to details as well as he dressed himself everyday (he did wear the newest in business attire- a real dandy) he would have known it was the jail prison school and not Macomb Correctional Facility.” Jesse winked at me, hung up the phone, and informed me it wasn’t us. I believed he enjoyed that. ..Prison Stories To Be Continued..
This is Black History Month and on Fridays in my classroom I would usually show something related to our African American Community. My students enjoyed the diversion and we could have some discussions which weren’t always cordial. My universal antidote: If we don’t acknowledge our past mistakes we are destined to repeat them. This message didn’t always sit well with my student’s who were repeat offenders.
They didn’t listen then, and they won’t listen now. Israel knows what has to be done to protect their country. Godspeed. Am Yisrael Chai
MJ-Way 