Elsewhere: Volume Ii (ePub)

Joseph Klinger has problems in returning to start his fifth-grade school year at St. Cleo’s Grammar School. It is difficult for Joe to forgive the kids that attacked him just a few months before. Joe looks to his relationship with God to find the strength to be able to function as a student even though he would be learning with the kids that attacked him.

The courts ordered all students to participate in the American Standardized Testing Program. Government officials wanted to examine just how well the students of St. Cleo’s Grammar School were learning and how they were grasping what they were supposed to be learning at their grade levels. They also wanted to investigate the possibility of grade-curving on exams and falsifying grades on report cards if such violations were happening.

The students’ scores on the AST assessments over the first three years of testing were disappointing. The principal of the school, Griffin Odell, repeatedly promised that he would work to solve the school’s problems and to reform its students.

The Mayor of Effitsville, Mitchell Osborne, argued that the City of Effitsville could not support the financial burden of supporting another public middle school. The mayor wanted everyone to punish Joseph for being who Mitchell considered to be a whistleblower.

The Effitsville Family Planning Center was going to begin to give family-planning training to sixth-grade, seventh-grade, and eighth-grade students that were entering puberty and young adulthood. The authorities came to understand that some students in this school were dating and were experimenting with intimacy. The government made family-planning training mandatory for all young adults in this school.

The Effitsville Behavioral Health Center helped Joseph to function with psychotherapy and psychiatric treatment. Ellen Hayes was a mentor for Joseph and for his best friend, Clarence Fulbright. She tries very hard to explain the reality of the dangers of under-aged dating and an under aged pregnancy to Joseph and Clarence. She was also a part-time counselor at St. Cleo’s Grammar School.

Elsewhere Volume 2 offers unpublished theoretical religious discussions about God’s role in our daily lives. The faculty of the school tries to modernize their student’s religious training to help them to find God in their daily lives.

The Government finally makes the decision that is best for the present and future students of the City of Effitsville. This story was inspired by true events concerning a parochial grammar school closure in the mid-1980’s.