Prioritize. It's what adults do.

Question: Which one of these kids is more important?

Child A

Child B

Child C

Child D (Ohmigosh he's so CUUUUTTTEEE!!)

Child E

Go ahead and take your time. No rush.

Can't decide?

Oh wait- you think all children are equally valuable?

Good!!!

Congratulations you just passed the "decent human being" test!

Yes, all children are equally important.  All children are inherently valuable and deserve to be loved and cared for by adults.

All right now that we have agreed that all children are equally valuable, I'm gonna head to the store and get some groceries. But what am I gonna buy for the two billion children of the world?  I mean they are all important right? They all need to eat. I can't just buy groceries for my own kids can I? That would be crazy selfish. We just agreed that ALL children are equally important.  So I have to take care of them all. I have to use my resources on all of them. Right?

2 billion bottoms? We're gonna need a lot more toilet paper!

Of course not. That is not only ridiculous, it's impossible. I literally can not provide food for all the children of the world. If I try, every child will end up with about half a grain of rice before I run out of money and nobody gets to eat. Well, everybody can eat the half a grain of rice, since it's gluten free, but they will not be very satisfied.

Even this epic pizza cannot feed all the children in the world. 

The truth is ALL children are important, but not all children are my responsibility.   

Every parent is responsible for providing food for their own children. Every parent is not responsible for feeding all the children of the world.  

Now if you happen to be pretty successful at feeding all of your own children, you might (out of the kindness of your heart) want to take a look at your neighbor's children and see if they need some food too. And if you have resources to spare, you could feed them too. Or you could donate some money or food to a food bank or homeless shelter. Or hire ninjas to sneak food into their pantries if you're feeling really jaunty about it.

However, if you are homeless or your kids are going to school without a coat because you can't afford one, that probably isn't the best time to volunteer to be "snack mom" for the soccer team. Not even "Snack Ninja" despite how cool that would be. Basically, if you are struggling to take care of your own kids, you probably shouldn't volunteer to take care other people's kids.

Getting your kid a coat: Priority.

Getting super cute cupcakes for the football team: NOT a Priority.

Similarly, if you are crying yourself to sleep at night because your pantry is empty and you don't know what you will feed your kids tomorrow, you probably shouldn't be trying to sign papers to adopt someone else' kids. It doesn't mean you are cruel and it doesn't mean you hate children, it just means you know how to "adult".

I was gonna fill these shelves with like books but I decided instead I wanted to
buy a couple of ponies because all kids like ponies and not all kids like math.
No, I don't know where we're keeping the ponies or how we will afford to feed
the ponies for years to come.
Stop talking about this. Do you hate ponies and children or something?

As adults we understand that there are things in life that we must do, and things that we can do.  We can not even begin to work on the cans until we have taken care of the musts. That is called adulting. We all have to learn to do it. This is what separates us from tweens and puppies. The ability to distinguish between wants and needs. Between cans and musts.

Now, let's pretend that instead of being a parent you are actually a school district. And let's imagine that buying food is like buying curriculum.  And just for fun let's pretend that your house is really New Horizon's High school.

Now imagine you see some really adorable preschool children on an adoption web-site. What should you do?  Those cute little toddlers are so sweet looking! And we all agree that they are every bit as important as your own children, but.....

THEY CAN NOT BE YOUR PRIORITY. BECAUSE ADULTING.

Right now PSD is moving at lightning speed to get a Pre-K center built to serve pre-school aged children in our community.  That is a totally worthy goal. Those children are every bit as important as any other children on the face of the planet.  Plus they are adorable in ways that acne-prone, awkward teenagers are not.

But....

YOU CAN NOT MAKE THEM YOUR RESPONSIBILITY. BECAUSE ADULT.

Where there should be books, our cupboards are bare.

Where there should be a roof over our childrens' head, we instead have chronic flood conditions at New Horizons, Stevens, Longfellow, and McLoughlin.

We have 17,000 children to take care of, and honestly, things aren't going smoothly. We have growing pains on an epic scale and thousands of children we are legally obliged to care for in portables. We had a hard time passing our last bond but all three elementary schools from that bond are already at capacity. Yet, for reasons no one can explain, PSD wants to bring in a few thousand more, all the while claiming that we are too poor to feed and house the ones we already have.

WHY?

If you can't take care of your current responsibilities, you shouldn't be trying to take on even more. That is irresponsible. That is a failure to adult. It may seem magnanimous to care for people that you don't have to care for, especially if they are super cute, but it's not. Not if you aren't taking care of those you are already responsible for. Shirking a less glamorous responsibility to volunteer for another, more adorable one doesn't make you awesome, but it might make you a less-than-stellar adult with terrible judgement.

It's time for PSD to make its current responsibilities into priorities, and take care of the students we have before we go looking for more. That's the adult thing to do here.