kinda sad...

Last night they had a program at the school to honor the students that were on the honor roll. Tim and Alex both were invited. The school is huge and there were hundreds of kids on the honor roll, so we were prepared to be there a while. Our kids were supposed to be there 1/2 hour early. I figured they had to organize all of the students so they would not have a mess when they tried to announce all of them. They also broke it down into groups. Freshmen and sophomores in the first group. Juniors and seniors in the next. I could understand why they did it that way because there would probably not be enough room for all of the parents in the auditorium. I was just glad that I would not have to sit through them reading off all of the underclassmen.
So we had a half hour to kill. There was a jazz ensemble from City High playing on stage while we waited. They were really good and we enjoyed it.
Then came time to bring out all of the students. My jaw just dropped. There were about 12 juniors that came out on stage. Then they brought out the seniors. There were about 10 of them that came.
We had to suffer through a couple of sports banquettes and they truly sucked. Boy howdy the parents showed up to hear all the cliche crap about building character and life long lessons and blaah blaah blaah. The place was packed for the relatively few students who were in sports.
I just could not understand how parents expect kids to believe that they should do well in school and that it is important, but yet the parents can't drag their asses in to school one night and make them feel good about what they have done.
Anyhow, Mary and I were proud when they called out kids names out one after the other. Hell we had 20% of the students on stage that night.
One thing that I noticed was the one black kid that was honored was dressed like a thug. Gangsta. Playa. But he was on the honor roll and his whole family was there taking pictures. I was glad that he was able to do that and that at least HIS parents appreciated what he had done.