When my eldest daughter began her elementary school education, we lived in Venice, CA. Now Venice is pretty chill, as far as most neighborhood communities go. It takes a lot to stir up the locals. Losing our school principal did just
that. He had been at our local, public elementary school for years and was beloved, not for being warm and fuzzy, but for getting some serious funding to this much-deprived institution. And POOF, just like that, our Fairy Godfather, vanished. He took a position downtown at an arts-centric school that was too good to pass up. It was my first experience with “the one that got away”.
Several years later, after giving birth to a second child, we moved a mere 13 minutes away from our beloved Venice to a more “small town” community up above the beach cliffs. Word had it that the public schools (and private) were top notch, from elementary to high school.
