Was: Cleaning Day, Now: A New Day

This is a strange post to be writing.

Initially, I was going to request everyone’s help next month to spruce up the school. I wanted to take a Saturday afternoon in the middle of May and do some painting, plant some flowers, etc. Here’s the email that I sent to the Senior Center.

Hi Judy,

Thank you for getting the floor cleaned so quickly last week. I don’t like to complain. The floor is usually bad after the weekend, but it was particularly awful that day.

I want to ask about something I talked to Bruce about a couple of years ago but never received an answer. I would like to have my students do a “Cleaning Day.” We are preparing for a tournament the last weekend in April, so ideally it would be after that.

I would like to focus on our room and entryway, but if there were other projects, I would be willing to consider them as well. We could do things like:

• Finish painting the large wall.
• Clean and refinish the wooden counter-top.
• Mend the cabinets.
• Scrub the tables and chairs.
• Paint with new (muted) colors.
• Plant flowers.

Of course, we would pay for whatever materials were needed.

On another topic, we need better mats for the floor and are preparing to do a fund-raiser to purchase them. The mats I have in mind would be wall-to-wall (or nearly so), and like now, we would put them down and pick them up every night. I would be willing to allow the yoga class to use them as well since they seem to have problems with their mats going missing.

The reason I’m mentioning this to you is that they would need to be stored in the storage room and would be somewhat bulky. I didn’t want to add anything else back there without talking to you first.

Let me know what you think.

Sincerely,

I didn’t receive a response for a long time, but finally, in response to an unrelated email, I was asked to contact the board president. I waited a few days since I was sick and could barely talk without coughing. When I did speak with him, he asked to meet me the following Friday, presumably to discuss plans for cleaning and sprucing up the room. I rearranged my schedule so that I would have plenty of time to talk with him.

He never showed for the meeting.

I texted, and the only response I got is that the board was meeting to discuss matters and that they would call afterward. I never received a call but found a letter taped to the wall when I arrived for class. There was a letter inside that stated that the Center was terminating our agreement on the first of May.

Their reasons? Budgetary mostly. They have seen massive cuts to their budget over the past few years. Our rent, due to some challenges the past few months, has been a little slow, but we were catching up quickly. Considering that the previous two years we had the rent paid six months or more in advance, I wouldn’t expect that to be a major reason for giving us the boot. Well, their reasons are their own. I have a good idea what caused the unceremonious severing of our relationship, and it has nothing to do with us.

What does this mean for us as a school?

Having been given only two weeks to find a new home for the school, I think we should expect some downtime. I have a good place for us in mind, but it is nowhere near being a done deal. There is still a chance that we can accomplish the move and be up and running by the first of the month. Things are, of course, complicated by the fact of the Midwest Tournament next weekend. We will be out of town from Wednesday through Sunday.

Students can expect a phone call as soon as I have a deal hammered out somewhere. Since we have students planning to promote to Blackbelt in June, it is imperative to me to restart classes as quickly as possible.

I feel something like a teenager being thrust out on my own. The Senior Center was always meant to be a short-term location for us. We’ve been here too long. It’s time to take our chances out in the world…again.