So..I am angry. My child is a teenager, 8th grade and has an injury. I am still not "out" with people so do not want to give much detail and out myself.

Child was given a "pass" so no tardies would be extended. So, tardies were supposed to be excused if needed due to her condition that is still under doc care. Child is moving much better than previous but still not totally great and is having trouble getting from point a to b with a locker stop in between due to condition of the leg. SO..child gets lunch detention yesterday because of "four" tardies. Well, there shouldn't be any in reality. So, I called office and they tell me there is 6 and asks if "I want to excuse those now". The problem is three weeks ago when the stupid robo call came I called and office asked me the SAME question and I said excuse them and they said they did. Anyways, long story short, by the time principal got on the phone there were NINE tardies. The school should learn some consistency. First and foremost, there shouldn't have any as a "pass" was given. Second, don't tell the child it's four if it was six or nine. So which was it? 4, 6, or 9?

I told the school if they ever discipline my child, especially detention then I deserve a call first. I am the parent. I informed them that I was the parent, child is a minor and I will be consulted first. Honestly, the point is tardies were a non issue because she had been given a "pass". Had the school communicated with me before sending the child to detention all would have been solved and the humiliation and anger child and Mom now feel would have been diverted.

Don't mess with my kids and unjustly discipline. I've always told my kids that if they are in the right I will defend them completely, if the school is right I will defend the school. They get it. The school hasn't figured that out yet. The school is in the wrong here and they don't get it.

Rant over. Thanks.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/2014 12:02PM by mew.

Have you tried going to school and explaining your childs situation and limitations?

Seems to me that would get better results than arguing with a robo call.

I've never had any luck getting a robo call to take my number off their calling list.

It is well documented with the school they know exactly what is happening.

The robo call is what started the arguing with the real people at the school. They claim the robo call's are to "help" us to know what's going on. The point is the calls should have never happened as the tardies should have always been excused due to the limitations that the school is well aware of. :)

Is this in Utah?

My son was put an "Attendance Probation" for the upcoming school year. This was a couple of years ago. We didn't found out about this "probation" until we went to register him for the next school year late in that summer...so we weren't told of this "issue" of theirs when they deemed this a course of action...at the end of the (then) previous school year.


So....WHY was my son put on Attendance Probation...you ask?
He did miss a week of school for an EMERGENCY APPENDECTOMY and complications from this.

Both me...and my wife called:
The school, his teachers, the principle, and other people in the front office MULTIPLE times. We asked for his homework he was behind in but they wouldn't give it to us.

After the probation notification, I had to call the principle AND write a letter explaining the situation. I did tell her that THEIR lack communication is not my issue and she should address it with her staff and the teachers.

No. Thank goodness we aren't in Utah anymore. I am sorry that your school put you through that crap! The kid had surgery for god's sake. Schools need to step away and let us parent. Geesh.

Well I asked the school WHAT justified being absent for a week, since an appendectomy wasn't a good enough reason.

How is that not a good enough reason? What was their "approved" reasons? That would be a fun conversation. lol.

It's well known that "educators" have the lowest standardized test scores of all collegiate disciplines--make of that what you will. My experience is that my kids are more intelligent than many of their faculty. Reasoning is of little use--what they respond to are threats.

You are absolutely correct. I agree. Unfortunately I have to get nasty before they listen and I really HATE being nasty. It just seems anymore to get people to open their ears and pull their heads out of their asses you have to threaten and yell. I hate it. makes me look like a b!tch and then they tiptoe around me on eggshells when I come into the school.

That's an odd myth and it is easily disprovable. It comes from the fact that education majors tend to have below average SAT test scores (as do people who choose military, health and psychology as a major, just to name a few). However, it doesn't hold true for teachers who actually graduate. In fact, only half of the people who choose to study education actually graduate. The tests you have to pass to get a teaching license are far more difficult than the SAT, and there are many of them.

I did extremely well when I took the GRE and they placed me in the 97th percentile in Mathematics and 96th in Language. Of the three Praxis tests I had to take to become an educator, two of them were far more difficult than the GRE despite the fact that I was (and still am) an expert in the fields I was being tested in.

The fact that education majors tend to have lower than average SAT scores says a lot more about what classes students find easier rather than the intelligence level of a group of people.

What it really truly comes to is the fact that kids don't have the brain power or development or maturity to do half the stuff they have them doing earlier and earlier. As math teacher said today "math I teach today is much harder and different than when I started 25 yrs ago". The kids aren't getting it because they aren't READY. There is a reason for decades and decades certain levels of math and other subjects were taught in high school not 5-8th grade (Algebra). And, all the funky ways they teach kids now is so crazy and confusing to me and I am a grown, educated adult. So, maybe teachers need to teach and teach the kids what they understand at age appropriate levels and stop trying to turn them into Einstein.

One thing I've learned is junior high is messy. Honestly, you'd think it would just be for the kids with new transitions and what-not, and even for parents as they maneuver through a new era, but it seems so sloppy overall with the administration as well who should be the ones who know better. I thought it was just me/my school, but maybe this is a problem with junior high schools all across the land. Honestly, what are these people doing?

No it's an issue all over. For sure. Just different schools have different issues but boils down to a lack of leadership. For sure.

They're doing this in Junior High???
They count "tardies" and make robo calls in JUNIOR HIGH?

Yes, that is right. Elementary too. LOL.

I have a kid with some serious health issues, and I get that excessive absence letter every year. I have come to realize that a lot of that stuff is just automatic and even handled through outsourcing.

My solution is to volunteer enough that the ladies in the office know me well. I'm not sure it would have prevented the lunch detention, because it's tough for kids to stand up to an adult who doesn't have all the details and explain that this isn't a problem. But it does help a lot whenever there are issues - once you've spoken to all the people affected (the attendance clerk, principal, VP, counselor, disciplinary head, teachers giving the tardies, whoever you think might be involved in the future) the problem should go away.

Remember though, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. My approach is to be very nice and extremely persistent.

Good luck - I so understand why you are mad. My own child was limping around for a month in a boot because someone tackled her in PE during a handball game. It sure made life tough for a while.

I have tried so hard to be polite and kind since we moved here (new town, new schools, 4 months). But the fact is the school didn't do what they said they would do and then penalized my child for it. :) I admit, I lost it this morning but it doesn't seem like I get anywhere if I am nice. That's frustrating. Do they think I like or enjoy being a b!tch?

I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around this and I think that's for several reasons, one of which is I haven't been in school or dealt with a school in a long long time.

But back in the day, after an absence or a tardy, we were sent to the Attendance Office to plead our case with the Attendance Officer (Gestapo) who was a curmudgeonly asshole apparently, the second he got up out of bed in the morning. (Why do a job like that when it's clear that you have an obvious seething hatred for teenagers? WHY?) Anyway, you'd take in your note from your parent. (This was day after, so Robocall had already happened, only it was the Attendance Gestapo making all those calls as Robocalling did not exist then.) And the Attendance Gestapo would then fill out a little slip of paper and sign it, and every time you stepped into a classroom, the teacher wouldn't let you stay until you showed him or her your pass, at which point you were excused and you could go sit down for class.

So if the child got a pass, is it not like a hard-copy, actual paper, pass? There's just some "pass" in some computer database somewhere and the teachers know fuck all about it? Is that the case? I can't understand how the kid got all these detentions when she had an excused tardy pass. Do the teachers not see this pass?

When I taught in public school the pass was either a note from the attendance office or a note in the computer system about the child being late. When things were really busy I wouldn't get a note, but I would see that the tardy was cleared the next day. Because of that, when students were tardy I would never call them out publicly because of it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/2014 02:02PM by snb.

Correct. The teachers were apparently notified by email to excuse her from tardies to give her time to get from class to class. The office also documented it (apparently). I thought all was well until she came home yesterday and told me they pulled her out of class and told her she had lunch detention. The principal sent out another email this morning and apologized for the error on their part. It doesn't really appease me as she has already been humiliated. Believe me dogzilla, I don't get it either and I am the parent. I don't understand how they OFFERED me the "pass" for tardies and then didn't hold to it. I'm just as confused. I don't think it will happen again after this morning. I don't think the office had their day start very nicely.

Another issue is that maybe the teachers themselves aren't listening to the administration. That doesn't excuse them, but might be an explanation for why the email and pass were disregarded.

Well, I think I see the problem and it's with the process. What teachers have time to check email? In between classes? Come on! I work with teachers and we send emails to communicate with them all the time, but we give them a few days to respond because teachers. They aren't sitting behind a desk, like in my job, with time to kill. Sounds like this school should go back to handing out physical passes -- little slips of paper, potted plants, whathaveyou.

The school shouldn't have done that. At some level you have to accept that they are probably insanely busy and inundated with issues. I worked in a Jr. High and it was crazy town. However, if you've already talked to them about this, and the student was given a pass, then this is incompetence and it needs to be addressed. Being an administrator or office staff in Jr. High isn't an easy job, but that is not an excuse for them to discipline your son over a clerical error. Making your kid sit in lunch detention is inexcusable.

They need to fix this and to personally apologize to you.

My guess is that they probably didn't communicate to the teachers (who mark the tardies) what the pass meant. This might be because they didn't get around to it, or they wanted to be discreet about your son's injury. Either way, failing to communicate this is probably what cause the problem and it isn't a good way to run a school.

I agree. I guess I don't give them much leniency due to they have a whooping 400 kids. 400. In a middle school. Small town. Small school. Administration should be doing better. The thing that kills me is the office admits and acknowledges she was given a "pass" to be tardy. What part of that did they forget?

Wow, 400 kids is a really small school. Most of the explanations I was giving would be more applicable to a much larger school.

I'm sorry they did that though. I hope that they make it right.

Principal said "well, she has one in the bag and the tardies have been excused". That comment is still grating my nerves.

Go get em Mew hehehe ;)

Sorry about that...my kids are all home schooled. But my oldest is going to start going in 8th grade to get used to school before High School......should be interesting.

Wanderinggeek, I'd go insane homeschooling. :) Junior high is a different kind of world. I look forward to high school, but have my middle child going into jr.high. :).

Yeah, but, can they give her her lunch hour back? (Okay, half hour, whatever it is.) Still. She was already punished for something she didn't do and was supposedly excused from. So that principal owes HER a detention. You should suggest that he/she comes over to your house and just sits in the kitchen for a half hour before he/she goes home. "Then we'll be even."

Oh why didn't I think of that dogzilla! Can you imagine. Makes me laugh thinking of this big 6' 5" man, 250+ lbs sitting in the middle of my kitchen looking down at the floor! HA! Damn, I am going to remember that one.

Better yet he should go to lunch detention with the kids and follow the rules they are required to follow himself. :)

I would go insane too.....maybe that is why my DW can't see the obvious issues with the church...hmmmm.

You said it.