La Bene Vita

Polarismageddon, Days 19-21

Last night, I caught myself singing under my breath, "It's the laaaaaast Monday..." to the tune of "Last Midnight" from Sondheim's Into the Woods.

We will never teach another Polaris Monday night lesson again.

"It's the final countdown..." (In case musical theatre references are lost on you.)

Four more nights of lessons in the Polaris location of my music school (Michelle Tuesday Music School, or just MTMS) before we shut our doors forever, and I am ridiculously excited about it. By cutting my locations in half, I'm cutting the workload in half, and even better, keeping the best of all the stuff from both locations and getting rid of the junk. Every week, during the week, I've been loading up my SUV and moving chairs, furniture, instruments, supplies, shelves and other storage units, art and other wall hangings, tech devices, etc. etc. from Polaris to my other school in Gahanna (or Goodwill.) Every weekend, hubby and I have been making improvements to Gahanna.

This past weekend, we installed a large, heavy duty shelving unit (new from Lowes) and two 12' closetmaid shelves (relocated from Polaris) in the music lab for instrument storage. That way, teachers can access the instruments (which were previously stored in the classroom) without interrupting any lessons.

(sideways bc I don't know how to prevent that in WDC; it's automatic)

The aforementioned classroom is slated for a renovation. We're dividing the large classroom into two smaller rooms: (1) an extra-large lesson room for drum lessons and rock band classes, and (2) a new lesson room / office. This project will not only provide me with my own dedicated space for teaching and administration, but it also increases our capacity for private lessons.

I have received 2 out of 4 bids for the renovation project. The first first one (NS) is higher than I expected, but I can swing it. The second one (BH) is ridiculous, but at least I now know that NS wasn't out of line. I'm waiting for the third (RU) and fourth (SB) bids before I contract NS, because I'm hoping SB comes in with the lowest bid, or at least close enough to the lowest bid to get them to price match. They know everyone in the city's building department, and they ran to city hall after walking through my space and taking measurements and talked them into agreeing to a "simple permit" for my project. Instead of two permits (alteration and electrical), there would only be one permit, which means half the cost and half the inspections. And SB was super knowledgeable about what the city will and won't allow (all the local municipalities have their own rules.) And finally, they're a family owned (dad + two sons) local small business, as local as it gets - their filed business address is in the unincorporated town where my husband and I live, and the son who will be in charge of my project lives in Gahanna, the city where my business resides. Dad started contracting in the 70's, so they have a lot of experience. I just like everything about them.

On the hiring front: I *think* I hired a theory teacher for my music lab, finally. I say "think" because I *thought* I hired a guy named Kyle a week and a half ago. He accepted my offer in writing (by responding to my email) and agreed to an orientation date, but on the day he was scheduled to start work, he apologized and rescinded his acceptance because he couldn't work out the transportation. So here's hoping this guy shows up for his orientation today.

We also interviewed two reception candidates and adored one of them, but she declined our offer. The reason was, we asked her in the interview about her recent moves (she's changed employers - with relocations - roughly once a year since COVID.) She gave us an  adequate explanation in the interview, enough that we extended an offer, but when she declined it was on the grounds that she was afraid she would let us down, because if the right opportunity presented itself, she might take it and leave again. Disappointing, but I appreciate not wasting my time on training a flight risk. Now we're back to square one on reception hiring.

This time next week, I'll be in Polaris, supervising the piano movers as they load up six Polaris pianos to relocate to Gahanna. And there will be no more Polaris lessons.

"It's the laaaaaast Tuesday..."