Explaining why we should stay open

My supervisor calls me into his office and informs me that the English teacher at the girls' facility is quitting. I nod but don't see why he is telling me. Of course, she is jumping ship. Her facility is proposed to close. What would be her motivation to stick around? Who wants to watch the classroom they've built be picked apart and ships away by government accountants?

He clarifies that they are folding the girls into their own wing at the maximum-security boys' facility, something of which I had not been aware. I had received the apparently erroneous information that the state would ship all the adjudicated girls into one facility in the middle of the state, which seemed only slightly less unwise than putting them behind the barbed wire of a maximum-security boys' facility.

I did not want to work with the boys at the highest security facility. I would have because it was half the distance of the next nearest facility (and close to three times longer than my current commute), but I was not thrilled at the notion. That I could work with the girls -- of whom there are fewer and thus a different range of dysregulation than male murderers and serial child rapists -- feels better. It has been so long since I have had a primarily female classroom, having at my present facility only the occasional transgirl.

As vexing as I find this potential closure, this is a possibility that brightens me.

I ride this thin hope for a few hours before one of my coworkers hands me a printout with a few lines highlighted. Sue Serino, a Republican senator for New York, passed a bill to keep my facility open -- or at least force Governor Cuomo's people to better explain why closing us is necessary. It will have such a negligible effect on balancing the state budget. (In fact, it would be counterproductive, as the state would still have to pay for the physical plant, the salaries of all the displaced workers, and retrofitting other facilities to handle the nonsecure students who would otherwise come to us.)

I look this bill over and believe, with enough evidence, that this has to do with my efforts. I had been directing people toward petitions, and the Dutchess Progressive Alliance newsletter published an essay I wrote about keeping the facility open. While I was adamant and justified in all I wrote, I did this in part to say that I had done all I could when it came to an end. Some at my facility rolled immediately onto their backs and gave up, unwilling to even sign their name to a petition because they saw it as a lost cause.

I did not expect that my words would go all the way to the Senate, to say nothing of the bill passing.

My supervisor thinks that it stalls here, that Serino only did this so that the state Republican can have on record that they did propose to keep us open. Wouldn't their constituents rather than my students be off the streets and adequately cared for? It is a possibility that this bill was passed for cynicism or to strike out at Cuomo for his misdeeds. (He allegedly covered up COVID deaths to make the state's numbers look better and more women are coming forward to accuse him of sexual harassment and abuse.) The Assembly might shut it down for the sake of opposing a bill passed by the other party, but I still hope that it doesn't die on partisan lines.

There is a chance that this works, though. Owing to something I wrote, my facility may be saved from closure. One of the guards says, if I am successful in keeping us open, I ought to be Employee of the Month. I will be satisfied just staying an employee.

Soon in Xenology: My facility staying open?

last watched: What We Do in the Shadows
reading: Daimonic Reality