Feb. 2 Puesta Del Sol

The biggest school we go to in Rio Rancho. Saw 165 kids. Despite the vastness of the school grounds and large numbers we saw, the week was stolen by a character called 'Frank'.

January 23 La Promesa Elementary

OK, first of all, if the 'sticks' is an imagitive place describing a location beyond anywhere civilized, this school is 15 miles past that. Situated somewhere along the plains of sagebrush and pinon pines in NE Soccoro county rises a bright pink adobe styled elementary school named 'La Promesa'. I think it means 'the Promise' in Spanish. Too bad...I'm not sure what these folks were promised, but undoubtedly it was a let down when they arrived. While many of the schools we serve have Spanish speaking students, this one actually had a couple of English speaking students. Case in point, I go into a first grade classroom to announce they won the pizza party for most dental forms returned....no reaction. The teacher then says the same thing in Spanish, and I get rushed by 22 screaming kids who act as though maybe this was THE very "La Promesa" that they had in mind when they arrived here....In any event, lots of bad teeth here and no way to pay for it, so we went instantly from a for profit organization to non-profit pretty quickly. Too bad the IRS doesn't let you fluctuate your status on a weekly basis. In business school, marketing class teaches you a strategy about being a loss leader for the sake of market penetration. If you aren't Wal-Mart or Southwest though, it usually means everyone in the market loses out in the end becuase everyone has to cut profits, adjust prices downward, just to compete. So I'm not sure why I keep implementing this strategy when we don't have any competition in this school district. One thing business school doesn't mention though, is that sometimes loss leadership and 'ethical' leadership aren't mutually exclusive. Simply put, even though no payment is coming in for treating many of these indigent children, it wouldn't be the right thing to walk away from those needing the very treatment and care we provide. So we do it...and don't receive payment...and get to experience "La Promesa" of business that it's hard to make money working for free. But sometime after the initial realization of our now non-profit status this week has hit me, I get a 75 minute ride home that reminds me that if you enjoy what your doing and feel you are making a difference, there are more primary and intrinsic satisfacations that can be felt, gained, and experienced in your work life over the pull of the almighty dollar.....

January 16 Dennis Chavez Elementary

Hired a new dentist to work with us this week, Dr. Karen Misla. So far, so good! The school is old and outdated, and the roof was being torn out and re-shingled. Despite the aging look of the school, last year they built a new $1.2 million gymnasium, a real thing of beauty that stills smell like freshly laid rubber flooring and wood in the rafters. Without question, this will be replaced with a stinky sock and gymshorts sort of odor as time goes on, but for now the smell matches the view.

As I often do now when I go into a gym, I caught myself studying the rafters and the ceiling and sort of chuckled....1985 was a rough year, as we had just returned from Guam and I was attending Castle Rock Jr. High in Colorado. Within a 5 week period, I had my tonsils removed (no easy operation for me as I had complications), a severe case of chicken pox that left me quite badly scarred, and then the incident in the gym. I had just returned from the chicken pox sickness, and was playing 3-on-3 basketball in gym class in preparation for 7th grade basketball tryouts. I was going up for a layup when all of the sudden I felt something heavy and metallic-like come crashing down on my head. I remember laying on the floor, dazed, and had the uneasy paranoiac thought that someone had thrown a Walk-man stereo through my brain. I was escorted to the locker room to put a towel on my bleeding head and to get the cobwebs out. As I was laying down, my friend Ed Taylor came up to me and showed me what had hit me. He held up the largest, fattest bolt I'd ever seen. It was probably 10 inches long, an inch thick, and weighed quite a bit. The gym coach then explained to me that this was one of the metal bolts that held up the metal rafter beams at the top of the gym ceiling, and that it had somehow wiggled loose from the rafters, fallen down, and grazed the back of my head precisely as I was going up for the winning layup! A trip to the radiologist later that day revealed no cracked skull or serious concussion, but even he admitted that if that bolt had hit me even a 1/4 inch closer to the center of my head, it would've undoubtedly cracked my skull and likely killed me...

and now you know why I always study the ceiling of a gymnasium!