1 Thessalonians 5: 16-18
Once the GED testing service identified the jail and school district servicing them as the culprits for the security breach, all GED testing was stopped for South East Michigan, and exams were turned back into the GED testing service. This put our prison school into a state of flux. It was good that our school district was not the cause of the breach but all school districts with adult education centers, including ours, were not able to give exams until new exams were issued. This meant that our GED’s completion data would be null. A big zero. Our GED coordinator, (Mr. Dandy) would have a field day pointing this out to the Lansing Education Administration. Especially, since his prison school in the upper peninsula was turning GED completions out at a rather elevated pace. Mr. Dandy became the apple of their eye, and Jesse not so much. (Not that he ever was or cared to be)
Our special education teacher pointed out some facts that Jesse wasn’t aware of: The first, Mr. Dandy was receiving student inmates who were only needing to complete one or two years of high school from our reception area in Jackson. With the new law in place the inmates had to get a GED before being released from prison. They were very motivated to get their GED. Secondly, Mr. Dandy ran two shifts in his school. He had an AM shift and a PM shift. Jesse was not made aware of this by his colleagues. Finally, one would expect him to have more GED graduates given he ran his school for sixteen hours a day. No other prison school was being run sixteen hours a day. When Jesse found this to be true, he was livid. He of course had to make sure this was correct because he didn’t always believe our Special Education teacher whom he thought had an axe to grind with the prison education administration. He would get to the facts soon enough.
His one loyal connection was a matronly principal in the UP whom he could trust and often shared information with. She let him know that all of what our Special Education teacher had said about Mr. Dandy was true. It seemed that it was a concerted effort, between the Education Administration, and Mr. Dandy. The goal was to get inmates who were close to completing high school before they were incarcerated, sent to the UP prison school, so they could get their GED. The problem was that the data was being used to show the other prison schools were not pulling their weight when in fact their completion rates were as good or even better. The cost of running two shifts of teachers was never mentioned in the statistics. The only data collected was the amount of GED certifications issued.
She pointed out that Mr. Dandy was in fact running two schools. One during the day and one at night. His data was skewed. No other prison school was run 16 hours a day. I think that about did it for Jesse. He had enough. Our new Assistant Deputy Warden, being a prisoner at one time himself, was Jesse’s new boss. I could see Jesse wasn’t a big fan of this new reporting arrangement. Our new ADW had requested Jesses schedule. Jesse obliged him but was always sure to have a reason to change it. Something always seem to preoccupy his time at the Thumb Correctional facility , and he couldn’t make the scheduled meetings at Macomb. That drove our new ADW absolutely bonkers and I believe Jesse enjoyed frustrating him. Our school secretary (rest her soul) was one of Jesses biggest fans, and I believe she played a role in perpetrating his frustration. ..Prison Stories to Be Continued..
MJ-Way 