This year’s back to school season is remarkable for my family because it’s the first year our kids enter the Gloucester Public School system – our older son, Nathan, is entering Kindergarten over at East Gloucester Elementary. We “choiced in”, which basically means we “bring down the per-capita income of families in the school by several thousand dollars a year”. We’re downtown people, used to downtown things like “empty nip bottles thrown where your kids play” and “getting everything that isn’t lashed down stolen by a bearded man pushing a baby carriage with no baby in it.” East Gloucester is a weird but awesome hippie/hipster/edgy utopia where people watch each other’s kids and walk into each other’s sheds to borrow and return tools. Return tools they borrowed. Can you imagine? The decadence.
This isn’t even out of place here. At all.
Therefore, the 2014 school supply list was a bit of a shock to our system. We expected glue sticks, crayons, and washable markers. But this is what we got:
1. A Kayak
2. Kale Chips
3. Pencils hand-hewn by local underemployed woodcrafters
4. Organic, free-range backpack
5. Macbook Pro (New or under 6 months old)
6. Chuck Taylor Hi-Tops in a color besides black
7. A feather and dipping ink
8. Homemade recycled paper notebooks tied with ukelele strings.
9. Non-GMO Paint Pens
10. Lunches prepared entirely from a CSA or farm share.
There were other parameters as well. All mothers must volunteer in either long flowy skirts with clogs or ripped denim and Vans. Dads must wear horn-rimmed glasses and be well-versed in how to refinish a hardwood floor. Younger siblings must be in cloth diapers.
I can’t wait.
(I shouldn’t have to point out that this is satire. But, here we are, where I point out that no, this is not the real school supply list. God, some of you people.)
Glorious!
Up in Lanesville – it was the sound of Swamp Yankees’ banjoes wafting through the breeze. Over in EG….”Stop. Hey, What’s THAT sound?”
I wear my intentionally ripped jeans WITH the clogs, PLEASE mix your fashions #prepster
No Bento box?
Sooo last year 😉
And when the kids from Lanesville start to mix with the kids from EastGlo then you get the banjoleles and none of the boys will cut their hair. I’m in love, what’s that song? Yeah, I’m in love with that song.
i am the mad jellyest that you’re going to see the replacements this weekend.
Isn’t there a class in Replacements musicology at EGS?
>> 10. Lunches prepared entirely from a CSA or farm share.
Dude,we have our own CSA on the grounds, thanks to The Backyard Growers!
https://www.flickr.com/photos/martindelvecchio/sets/72157645022003856/
To be fair, the Backyard Growers have set up gardens at all five GPS elementary schools…
And here is the statistic that surprises many: of the city’s five elementary schools, EGS is the most representative in terms of low-income students:
28.5% Plum Cove
34.4% West Parish
39.2% East Gloucester
43.7% GPS District
61.9% Beeman
70.2% Veterans
Source: http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/profiles/student.aspx?orgcode=01070000&orgtypecode=5&
Wait that looks like EGS ranks 4th. Am I misreading?
I think so.
Of the 5 elementary schools, EGS is ranked 3rd, right in the middle. And its rate (39.2%) is the closest of any elementary school to the GPS’s overall rate (43.7%).
My point: many people think that EGS doesn’t have many low-income students, but it does.
I will tell you the village in the Himalayas you can get those Non-GMO Paint Pens if you come over and refinish my hardwood floor. Just a little spot where Stella likes to pee if it is raining outside.
Stella is a mutt. A dog.
Without the clarification, this would have gotten real weird real quick.
Weird? Most readers were probably thinking, “…because Gloucester.”