Assume it’s a US public school (but I’d be interested in how this would be handled in other countries). Say a patent has unresolveble issues with a particular teacher and is adamant their do not want their child in that class; does the school need to accommodate them? How do schools handle these situations? To what extent are the issues between the patent and teacher relevant? What if the parents insists that said teacher not interact with their child at all or exercisein loco parentis , under any circumstances?
In my experience the principal has the final say in matters like this.
What happens specifically depends on the circumstances. Sometimes the principal will move the student to another class. Sometimes the parents will be told “tough shit”, a little more politely. It depends.
Entirely depends on the school/district/Admin. Counseling will probably get the call first. Schedules can usually be adjusted. But if the teacher is teaching a singleton that the kid wants, they are SOL. Same same if they have an impacted AP schedule. Choices will have to be made and prioritized.
My personal experience goes the other way. As a teacher, I have sometimes flexed and “requested” Counseling not schedule a member of a family to any of my classes because of parental units and previous experience.
Our across-the-street neighbor was a teacher at my kids’ elementary school. We were friendly with them and my kids knew her from the street and school. However, she had a policy not to have anyone from the street in her class, and she somehow made it so, pulling whatever levers were available. My kids never landed in her class (even though they asked for her, repeatedly).
I don’t know what they’re required to do. But in my experience, parental requests for schedule changes are usually honored, if it’s possible to do so while still meeting graduation requirements and within the constraints of what teachers are offering what classes when. It’s not realistically possible, however, for a school to change what teachers are offering what classes when in order to satisfy a parent: It’s tough enough getting that to all work as it is.
Amazing. Both I and my sibling were in my Mother’s class in high school. I was even in her home room*.
*Don’t know how common this is, but our district had a 15 minute period called “Home Room” every day to ensure announcements and documents etc. were handled outside of regular classes.
In my middle school, the official policy was “suck it up, we don’t always get to choose who we interact with.” But in practice, the principal almost always knuckled under, sometimes to a ridiculous extent. She claimed, not unreasonably, that it was a way to protect the teacher from an unhinged parent. However, there was one kid whose mom insisted couldn’t be disciplined by: the dean of students, the teacher who ran the in-school suspension room, her (former) math and language arts teachers, or the principal herself. This meant that the ONLY staff member who was permitted to do any intervention (even down to telling her to put her phone away in the hallway) was the assistant principal.
And, more than likely when it comes down to it, the Courts.
The answer depends on whether it’s a public or private school here in the US. Private schools don’t have to make any such accommodations.
As far as I’m aware, public schools don’t have to make such accommodation. They might as a matter of policy, but there’s no right to be taught by a particular teacher or to NOT be taught by a specific teacher.
Part of it is likely to be how big a stink you make about it. My daughter raised hell with a principal over her kid being bullied in class; he resisted moving him, but caved in rather than have her in his office every day.
I’d also want to know why- “hes gay, I dont like gays”- NO!
She just hates my kid- maybe.
My daughter had a run-in with an English teacher in HS (in Montreal, but I don’t think it would have differed in the US) and we had a meeting with her and a vice-principal. Somehow it was patched up and the teacher left and the VP let loose with a tirade on her and why did give up the teaching job he enjoyed for a few extra bucks and lots of headaches like Miss Fiasco (a pun on her real name), etc. etc. Things did improve somewhat, but it would have been impossible to move her at that point.
When I was in elementary school, there was basically one class per grade so any such accomodation would have been impossible. Pretty much the same for my kids’ elementary school.
To hijack the thread a bit, the year before my middle child went to school, a neighbor told the kindergarten teacher that he was a holy terror and watch out for him. Afterwards the teacher told us about that and explained that she decided to keep her own council on that and that her first reaction to my son was that he was so quiet and reserved that she had at first wondered whether he might be slightly retarded. But no, he reacted with silence to being in a French immersion class and unable to communicate. The teacher never told us who the neighbor was, although I am virtually certain I know.
I never said there was such a right. Public schools are required to make such accommodations for a number of reasons by policy and in law while private schools are not.
My kid had a horrible grade 10 math teacher. Her response to student questions were often of the form, “What’s the matter? Are you stupid?” She took my kid aside after he asked a question she thought was ‘dumb’ and told him he should give up any thought of being a scientist or engineer, because he was horrible at math. The kids in the class were totally intimidated by her, and wouldn’t ask questions.
We complained to the administration, and before we could say which teacher was the problem they called her out and said that they get lots of complaints about her. Unfortunately, there was only one other math teacher teaching that class, and her class was full. So they could not accomodate a transfer. The teacher was near retirement, and they had no interest in disciplining her in any way.
We were forced to pull our kid from the class and he re-did it over the summer home schooling. Incidentally, he had never had less than an ‘A’ in math, and wound up getting a degree in mathematics with honors and a minor in Comp Sci from the University of Alberta. If he had had less involved parents, though, that teacher might have succeeded in derailing his future. She messed with his head pretty good, and it took a long time for his confidence to come back.
Yes. I went mostly to a private school, and there’s an advantage in being able to tell the parents “your child is not welcome here” - for intellectual or disciplinary reasons. Of course, back then they could inflict corporal punishment too, and I never heard of the parents complaining. (I never told my parents, I would have gotten it again at home too.) The only complaint was one of the teachers in Grade 3 complaining “why did someone tell their parent I smoked in class. I never have.” (Those were the days!)
Much later, friends of mine who were teachers in the public system complained that the school administration rarely backed the teacher in disputes with parents. But yes, there’s only one class of that grade, so the only recourse if things couldn’t be straightened out was for the child to change schools. (Unless the teacher did something so egregious even the union couldn’t save them)
Our kids’ grade and middle schools had a large number of … assertive … and involved … parents, many of whom had very specific ideas about which teachers were the best or at least the best fits for their kids.
Principals were very straightforward. No. It was actually entertaining to listen to how frustrated the parents got to that hard stop.
I agree, I remember when mine were in elementary school there were certain teachers everybody wanted their kid to be in that classroom. Finally the district decided to eliminate parent requests instead they placed students according to their own criteria of making a classroom a community of learners based on teacher recommendations and individual needs and strengths.
My high school did, too. Maybe middle school but I can’t remember…
That’s effectively impossible. I was a parent rep to the school board for two years (had all the priveleges on elected members except voting rights) and I witnessed a case in which a teacher was so incompetent that the teachers in the adjacent classrooms were complaining that the noise coming that teacher’s room were disrupting their classes. Parents were complaining constantly. So they decided to prepare a book consisting of all those complaints and, at the end of the year, fired him. The union appealed and the judge ruled that the process of preparing that book demonstrated that the principal had already decided he was to be fired and ordered him reinstated.
Now I am generally pro-union, but this was really intolerable.