Today is one of my favorite days of the entire year. Today is the First Day of School (FDOS). I’ve been looking forward to today since LDOS (Last Day of School) this past June.
It might be a bit of a stretch to call something a tradition when it has only been going for four years, but for the past four years that I’ve been writing this blog I have highlighted my annual FDOS photo of my own happy children. For those of you that keep track of such things, you may remember that my annual FDOS photo used to have three happy Neal boy faces in it when I first started writing this blog in 2003, but by last year it had shrunk to only one – my youngest son Ethan. He’s 16. That’s him on the left in the striped shirt. He’s starting the 11th grade this fall.
In this year’s FDOS photo, I’ve got a couple of extra guys: my exchange students Marcel, a 17 year old senior from Koln, Germany, and Jay-Jay, a 17 year old senior from Grijpskerk, Holland. They are both here under the Youth For Understanding (YFU) exchange program. They will live with my family and attend high school until late June 2007. They are both settling in and learning English quickly. It’s one thing to learn our language from a text book. It’s quite another to learn it from the 16 & 17 year olds of middle America. It’s a great experience for both the exchange students and for my family.
One of the reasons I like to highlight my annual FDOS photo is that it gives me a good lead-in to talk about the relationship between city government and the School District. In Eden Prairie, the relationship is strong and active. We work closely with the Schools on issues such as public safety in the schools, parking permits at the Community Center, ice arena rental at the Community Center for the District’s boys and girls hockey programs, coordination of a large park improvement project adjacent to Forest Hills Elementary School, Fire Safety Week activities with our Fire Department, repainting work crosswalks for kids that walk to school, and many, many more.
The Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Melissa Krull, and I work closely to keep our respective elected officials in good working relationships too. Since 2003 we have organized two joint School Board-City Council meetings each year to talk about our current joint projects and to discuss future areas where our joint efforts could produce compounded results for Eden Prairie residents. Our next joint meeting is October 3. At this meeting we are going to hear from a guest speaker who is going to talk about how cities and schools should work together on land use decisions to insure that we don’t inadvertently create elementary schools where the racial or ethnic or socio-economic status (SES) balance of the student population is out of balance with the racial/ethnic/SES balance of the community. It’s an important issue for Eden Prairie and one that will require future cooperation between city and school government in order to get it right.
Well, that’s it for me for FDOS. It’s a great day! We’re looking forward to an interesting year of cultural exchange at my house and an interesting year of learning together at the City-School level.
