When 80% Is Good Enough

One thing I tell our faculty and staff during Orientation is that our goal by the end of the time is to be 80% on the same page of what we need to know for the year.

I’m not trying to give us permission to slack; the reality is just that there’s only so much we can do without school beginning and students and parents being on campus with us.

Sometimes 80% has to be good enough.

This is especially true at the beginning of 2019-20 – our 24th school year – as there are plenty of new challenges facing us right off the bat:

– As you’ll discover (if you somehow haven’t already), Cottonwood Road is a mess thanks to the road-widening taking place, and none of us really knows how the construction will impact drop-off and pick-up. Will families be excessively late? Frustrated? Angry? Ask me on Friday and I’m sure I’ll know more.

– In addition to any immediate impact the construction might have, we’re unsure as to the long-term implications as well since learning that the city’s current plans do not include a left-turn lane into Petra from Cottonwood. We’ve met with city planners and suggested an alternative that would make a left-turn lane possible, as well as begun and encouraged Petra families to join us in a letter-writing campaign to the City Commissioners (I’m also attending their next meeting on Monday, September 9), but no one knows yet what access is going to look like yet.

– We have a new Portal system we’ve been working on since May, and while its launch to currently-enrolled families has largely been a success, there are still bugs we’re tracking down. As you might imagine, the jury’s still out as to how our school community will utilize this new technology, but we’re hopeful. (Friends and alumni of Petra who do not have students enrolled, we hope you’ll join up, as we plan to eventually run all communication through it.)

– This past spring, our Board of Directors decided it was time to start charging admission for junior varsity and varsity athletic events (we’ve done this for tournaments all the way down to 5th grade in the past, but weekly for regular season games will be new). We’re going to need a little more help on this (not to mention some adjustment to our plan with regard to the sports field venue), so we’ll see what happens on Friday, when we host Billings Christian on both our sports field and in our gym. (Note: we will have season passes available; details coming this week.)

– If you’ve followed along in the Board packets of the past few months, you may know that we have a few new policies and practices in place as well: to better facilitate student connection and relational courtesy, we’re asking students to stay off all electronics in the academic wings from 8 a.m.-3:45 p.m. unless expressly approved by a teacher; we’re also grouping Secondary locker assignments by house rather than by grade to continue helping our students to think of themselves and others as Petra community members rather than just as *fill-in-the-blank* graders.

– Schedules. Every student and faculty member has one, and while we think we have them all coordinated via the Portal and transition bells, as well as across all the classrooms and public space, the only way to know for sure is (you guessed it), to run through the day and week and take notes.

These are just a few of the areas I can think of, which, for better or worse, being on 80% of the same page on our first day is going to have to be enough. This is especially true for staff and families new to Petra (though let’s not assume that we who have been here for a while couldn’t benefit from giving and receiving some additional grace as well).

In thinking about starting the school year, a verse I’ve occasionally prayed for all of us is Ephesians 5:21: “Submit yourselves to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

As we come together tomorrow, I hope this verse will describe our relationships – that we believe the best in one another, that we stand shoulder-to-shoulder with one another, and that we talk to and not about one another – not because we have to (though we do) if we have hope of this experiment working, but because this is what Jesus calls and empowers us to do.

Let’s be 100% for that!

(Note: If you have any good stories from our first day this year, please share them with me. And, of course, if there’s something you think I can do to make things better, let me know as well.)