Someone commented recently that we were going through a grieving process. Since I was then in denial, I thought that was an exaggeration. Now I've moved on to anger. I am so angry. A year ago we were a wonderful department, a smoothly functioning, adaptive, innovative team. Then a few petty administrators came through like vandals looting a museum looking for TV's to sell. In a effort to make miniscule savings in their "own" budgets, they will increase the overall budget a hundredfold...and they don't care! Since we were an intelligent, innovative team, we are all aware of the pressures public education is under. We know about NCLB and the 65% solution and the 75% solution. If the same administrators had had a vision of how the district could deal with these pressures and shared that vision with us, we could have spent this last year building support infrastructure. Even without a vision from the top, if we had been allowed to communicate with the stakeholders, a shared vision WOULD have developed spontaneously because that's the kind of people we work with. Instead we were cut off from stakeholders and diverted by "strategic planning requirements", requirements that seemed to have fulfilled their purpose of keeping us from serious planning for a year. Any attempt on our part to develop real vision, plans or possibilities has been rebuffed, stalled, postponed, or just completely ignored. I am so mad!!!