by Dr. Pelham Mead

Directing a US Department of Education Title V grant is like picking fruit from a tree. You have to know what fruit to pick and what you can accomplish in the time allowed.

I was hired six months after the TITLE V grant was granted to CMSV for 1.1 million.

There was no office to work in so a storage closet had to be converted into an office. It was small but useable. My assistant Mrs. Py Liv Sun and I had to personally carry the metal cabinets out into the hallway to make room to move in. Eventually, someone picked up the cabinets and took them away. We went into the attic to find chairs and desks to put in our new office area and found plenty of old furniture. New we had to dust and clean the entire room out from years of dust and dirt. The windows had no insulation so we had to put plastic on the windows in the winter to keep the heat in the room. A LAN system had to be installed and improved lighting. Many of the ceiling bulbs were dead. We had the entire room painted on a weekend. It took a whole summer to get the Teacher Learner Lab up and running.

Cont.