Feb 13

Feb 13 The Rosedale School, 2020

Let’s get this out of the way right off the bat…I’m about to ask you for money.

I have never been a person who felt super comfortable asking anyone for money; well, except for when it was in return for those tasty See’s candy bars we sold back in school (remember those?!) or when I collected change for Unicef and wasn’t old enough to even realize I had the option of feeling uncomfortable about asking. And my Dad might argue that I had ZERO issues asking for some extra cash all through my teen years, but I digress…

I have never been a person who felt particularly comfortable asking for donations until my son started attending The Rosedale School nearly four years ago. I’ve written before about what makes this school special, but I want to build on that by telling you about how this school—this publicly not privately funded school—has continued to support my family as Miles’ health has declined and his needs have changed.

With past public schools, I would have worried that too many doctor appointments or absences would lead to the dreaded letter from the district threatening that you might have to face truancy court if your child missed another day. Yes, I know that many of us have seen these and usually just rip them up, but this rule-following libra got a wee bit of anxiety each time one of those arrived! At Rosedale, it is understood that these children face incredible medical and behavioral challenges that naturally are going to lead to more absences. Not once has anyone made me feel pressured for this, and I am truly grateful for this seemingly small amount of grace. When you have a child like Miles, you need a few extra bones thrown your way and a little grace is actually much more than that. I’m all cliches when I say ‘it takes a village’ or ‘I’ll take what I can get’ because the truth is, I NEED HELP and I am fairly terrible at asking for it.

At Rosedale, you just know that there is a whole lot going on behind the scenes with the administrators and teachers that allows our families the blissful ignorance of believing our absences and tardies are no big deal. I have zero doubt that the caring staff is scrambling behind the scenes to fight for us and make us feel confident that we parents are the best decision makers in what our kids need and when, not the school district. For this, I am extremely grateful.

At a time when the state of Texas is grossly lacking in its funding and acknowledgment of special education, and more specifically, when the Austin Independent School District is losing an exorbitant number of staff members due to poor pay and excessive caseloads, the team at Rosedale again has worked tirelessly to not allow this heavy burden to filter down to the families.

Last weekend Rosedale hosted its annual prom, an amazing event that your donations help to fund. The whole family is welcome to attend and provided with valet car service, a meal from Gusto’s Kitchen, professional family photographs, and dancing. The amount of time and love that goes into the planning and decorating for this is unreal. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I get a little choked up every single year that we attend. Families like mine do not typically get the prom experience we envision for our children, and to be brutally frank, some of our kids don’t live long enough to reach the age of a prom goer. This is Rosedale’s reality, and the school celebrates each year we have with our beautiful children through this incredible event.

This year, Miles was not feeling his best. Due to extreme weight loss over the past year, we have been slowly weaning him from one of his seizure medications. This has caused break-through seizures and pain for our boy, and he was not up for prom this year. Nonetheless, we loved the opportunity to get dressed up together, put a boutonniere on my handsome boy, and go out as a family of four. (We are usually a unit of three when going out since Miles can easily be upset in new surroundings) Miles started to become agitated right as we were pulling into the school and raced inside while making some very loud and displeased sounds with Brandon, Brooks and I trying to keep up with him. I yelled out, “Tolanys coming in hot” in an attempt at levity even though I was pretty disappointed that I knew this meant we weren’t going to be able to stay long. No one batted an eye or passed judgment and everyone let us do our thing as we were able to without pressure. We ate a little dinner, danced to two songs, sort of got a photo with all of us (I look forward to seeing the proof of this soon!) and within an hour, out the door we went. As my husband said, ‘It was our fourth best prom!’ You’ve got to try to look at things on the bright side, and even though it didn’t work out very well this year, we were still happy to have had the opportunity.

On April 4th we will be hosting our 26th annual Rosedale Ride. This is our main fundraiser for the year. Please join my family in supporting this treasured school by donating here. No donation is too small! If you are moved to share this post and this fundraiser with others, we would be grateful. Thank you, friends, family and strangers, who have so generously given the last three years. Your love and support means the world to my family!

To view my previous post about the Rosedale school, click here!