I admit it: when I took the job as principal/teacher at the Twin Hills (Alaska) school for the 2023-24 school year, I had an agenda. Well, several agendas.

I had already visited Twin Hills school many times through my five-year job with the Department of Education, and I had a long list of items under the loose heading, “If I could be the boss for about five minutes. . .”

One of said items was to get a pair of proper small-group tables for the elementary school classes. The tables in question as known as “kidney tables,” after their shape. They look like this*:

See the nice little niche for the teacher? See how the students can face her from the opposite, curved edge, so that everybody can see and participate equally? Teachers in Twin Hills had for years been making do with rectangular tables, which just don’t measure up. Add that to the fact that most of said tables were gimpy, with legs that wouldn’t adjust properly (note to self: there is no amount of strapping tape in the world that will fix the problem), and you begin to understand the depth of my determination.

Anyway, simple enough, right? There’s some money in the budget, so just order some tables, yes? Not so fast.

The first step is always getting approval from the higher-ups. I talked to my good friend in the district office, Jon Moneyman, and he explained to me regretfully that Title One, (big source of my school’s budget) did not allow for the purchase of furniture, the rationale being that Title One money should be spent on things that directly relate to instruction. However, being freshly back from my second retirement, and anticipating my third at the end of the school year, I decided to argue. I explained why I felt that these tables were important as a part of quality instruction, and I would bet my certificate on the notion that many, many Title One schools before me had found ways to obtain some. Jon said my reasoning made sense, and that he would consult someone further up the food chain. Within a few days, we got the green light to get some kidney tables.

Next, where to find these tables? At first it looked like a shoo-in: I spent an hour or so ordering a pair of lovely tables (one blue, one green) from amazon business (a deceptively easy process, especially since I didn’t have to fill out a purchase requisition, which is a process that will make you curse the day you were born or at least the day you decided to go into education). All went well until the end, when the little website cheerfully informed me that they could not ship such large items to Alaska. What was I thinking? Why not tell me that at the beginning?

Mind you, I didn’t survive a year in that job by taking no for an answer. Thus, I next set my sights on School Specialty Supply, an organization proud of its ability to, among other things, send enormous packages to rural Alaska. This time I did have to struggle through the brain-curdling process of putting in a purchase order request. Then, innocent lambkin that I am, I figured the hard part was over.  I browsed the School Specialty website, selected my tables, and followed the prompts. I kept getting error messages.

I spent some minutes swearing colorfully (like my father before me, I looked carefully over my shoulder first). I eventually found a telephone number that would, ostensibly, allow me to talk to a bona fide human. I eventually got through to said human, and she kindly explained to me that, for large items such as my tables, I would need to first obtain a quote, which would include the freight cost, from the company. I pointed out to her that nowhere on the website that I could see was this tidbit of information shared, and she regretfully acknowledged that this was so.

Anyway, I put in the quote request, and waited anxiously for the response. It took a couple more weeks and several increasingly cranky phone calls, but eventually I got my quote. . .and learned that with the freight to Alaska, the cost of the order was neatly doubled. I called Jon M. and asked him if this meant I had to redo the purchase order. He took pity on me and told me to go ahead and order with the existing P.O; I just had to add a note that freight cost had not been included in the original quote. This I gratefully did, and after a few more weeks and more than a few passive-aggressive phone calls to the company, I learned that my tables (one blue, one green) had been packed into one large box** and were officially enroute to my frosty little corner of Togiak Bay. Smooth sailing from now on, right? Ha. Stay tuned, my friends. Stay tuned.

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*Yes, this is one of the actual tables that I bought. So you can see that I won!

**This bit of information, that the tables were in one large box, will play an important role in the rest of the story.