An update on the update

Now that things have settled down and the offers have all come in, we've had some major thinking and praying to do. It has been hard to decide what is best for our family, both financially and otherwise. But, each of the offers were so different - not all of them included benefits and/or gave a substantial enough dollar figure for us to pay the bills, so the choice seemed pretty clear in the end. Here's how it went down:

Big day tomorrow! Keith has - are you ready? here we go - a whopping one, two, three, FIVE interviews tomorrow for a shot at SIX different teaching positions. Here's how it's going down:

9:30 AM - interview for a 70% full time (aka part time) math teacher position at Culver, Oregon (about a 20 minute commute) Keith was offered this job, but there were no benefits and the $$ was waaaaaaaaaaaay too low for us to be able to make this work. They even found extra work to make the position full time but without benefits (aka we'd be buying them out of pocket) even with the extra cash we wouldn't be able to do this. Keith had to turn them down.

1:30 PM - interview for 2 half time (translates into a full time position) math and spanish teaching positions with Gresham-Barlow web academy. I like this opportunity because he could work from home several days a week BUT it would require him to spend 2 days (one night) staying in Portland so he could spend time in his classroom. Not bad, considering the options. There was a job offer extended. After learning 1) it is not a Title I school - necessary for Keith to get his student loans forgiven as the last of 5 required years teaching as a highly qualified mathematics teacher 2) the "powers that be" beyond the principal at the school were unable to make the position full time. Unfortunately this would not work either. We even briefly talked about doing part Culver combined with the half time position at this web academy, but still a no-go.

3:30 PM - interview with Beaverton School District @ the international school of Beaverton for one of 2 math positions there. Keith was not offered a position at this school.

4:30 PM - interview with Beaverton School District @ the Health and Sciences Middle School for a math position. A job offer was extended to Keith here as well. This was a "real" job offer, with a good salary and benefits included. After weighing the options, it makes the most sense to accept.
[If you know much about Oregon you may have recognized these Beaverton interviews/positions are less than ideal because he would have to live in Portland during the week, home only on the weekends. Yuck. BUT it if it is the only option we will be more than happy to accept since we would be able to pay our bills and have health insurance. A sacrifice indeed but in this economy beggars can't be choosers. Can I get an amen?!] Obviously this will be a strain and Keith will be missing us throughout the week but there will always be the weekends! He will live with his dad during the week and Cam and I will likely spend time there some weeks. It won't be all bad. Hard? Yes. But entirely do-able? YES. We will be missing him like crazy but this is what we need to do.

The next day he had an interview with another web academy, Estacada. He was offered a job here (full time, benefits package - the works!) but he couldn't take it. As a "highly qualified high needs (math) teacher, Keith needs to work 5 consecutive years at a Title I school and all of his student loans will be forgiven by the government. He has already worked 4 of those 5 years. Estacada is NOT a Title I school and that would put our family in a position to have to pay off the loans + 4 years of interest that has accumulated. That's almost $20,000! With a Beaverton (Title I) offer in hand, we decided it wouldn't make sense to basically give away $20k so he could work from home most of the week.

There was one last possibility: Keith and I both had interviews at Mountain View High School in Bend (20 minutes or so for those of you who aren't that familiar with the area). Neither of us got the positions - Keith was the 2nd runner up to someone who'd already had a temp. job at the school (I didn't ask and I prefer not to know where I finished). Oh well! So, nothing left to do but accept the Beaverton job. It's going to be hard, but we really are just thankful for the income!

Thanks, everyone for waiting patiently until we were able to sort through everything and decide what was best for our family.