Reading the OP my immediate thought was to get media involved and shine a spotlight on this. Does you local newspaper have a rants & raves section?
A letter to the editor at least.
Eh, not necessarily. If it’s important enough, papers will make room for it. I used to edit and report for a weekly local paper (granted that timeliness is different for a weekly), and I’d have made room for something this if it had happened someplace I worked. I agree that Unauthorized Cinnamon should stay on top of this issue with the school, press and PTA.
In this area (I live fairly close to Unauthorized Cinnamon), they’ve tried to alleviate school crowding by having year-round schools. There are four different “tracks” that kids can be assigned to, so that only three of the tracks are in the schools at any given time. We also have traditional calendar schools, which is what my son will start in at the end of August. It was a huge controversy when this plan was implemented.
Yes, we do year round school, so the kids are in for 9 weeks, then off for 3, on a staggered schedule. As you can imagine, this makes air conditioning essential in NC.
I will be pursuing this generally with the news media and the school board, but also I realized I need to draft a letter to my daughter’s teacher stating that she is NOT to be put on a bus on an early release day without a parent’s express permission. That way at least my kid is squared away in the event school closes early again before the “investigation” is complete. It’s not like they can’t keep the kids - there are tons of children whose parents drop off and pick up, and they all stayed at school until a parent could positively be reached (obviously).
I live in Wake Co, but don’t have kids, so this doesn’t affect me directly. My father worked for the School Bus garage in a neighboring county for many years, and I know that for a bus driver “disciplined” = fired in that county.
Apparently, not anymore. There is an article in the News & Observer this morning about the two cases I mentioned. The bus driver who was “disciplined” was simply moved to another route.
Because if a motivated five-six year old could break in, so could thieves.
Man, thinking about that last night brought back exactly how sucky it was waiting for four-five hours for someone to get home.
Again, though, being left at school for eight hours was worse. (Teachers had all left, and I was the only one on that bus route.) The 70s were different, man. Nobody got fired or even reprimanded over that.
The mind boggles then.
When I was a mere SpazKitten we didn’t have AC at my elementary school. When the temperature was above 95 degrees, we got sent home at 1 p.m. The house I lived in didn’t have AC either. Now get those damn kids off of my lawn!
All right, that makes sense. I guess it disturbed me more that you had to stay outside yet another time waiting for the 'rents to come home…
It was worst when it happened in winter. Mom was a teacher, you see, and they didn’t always close her district if they closed mine early. (Very rare occasion that it happened. Say, burst pipe.)
… seriously, I had completely forgotten all that stuff. Man, how much mental trauma do we have that we don’t even think of on a day to day basis?
Another vote for calling your local newspaper. I worked for a local weekly until recently, and this is the type of story we would have jumped at.
Your missive to the principal was excellent, btw.
How does a 6 year old get on the wrong bus in the first place? (this is RE the article linked to).
In my 15+ years as a parent involved in the elementary school here, we have had ONE incident: a Kindergartner was not on the bus at all. Her mother freaked, called the school and the K teachers etc all went looking for this child. It turns out, the kid was picked up on the playground by her grandmother, who told no one she was taking the child. Thus endeth outdoor waiting for the buses. I witnessed the principal crying with relief over that one. But that was at bottom a family screw up.
I cannot imagine K’s being dropped off at some random bus stop. Here, they must see an adult-not an older child, an adult, before they let that kid off the bus. No adult? Kid goes back to school.
The principal called me. I get the impression that she is much better at expressing herself in a conversation than on paper. She had sent home a letter that had definite overtones of, “Well, the parents need to give us better contact information, and there wouldn’t be a problem,” but she said she only realized it could be read that way when other parents called her to complain. She admitted to me that it was all handled poorly, and said if she had it to do over, she would have just kept all the kids at school for parental pickup.
So Thursday a form came home with every child that asks parents to indicate what they want the school to do with their kid in the event of early release. “Keep my kid till you have talked to me” is one of the options, and yeah, that’s the one I chose.
I am still baffled at how anyone could have thought it OK to do what they did, but I know that everyone makes mistakes sometimes, and how mistakes are handled is most indicative of whether a person or institution is trustworthy. I’m satisfied now that my child will be taken care of, and I’m willing to drop it.
I really appreciate everyone’s responses - even in a case like this, you sometimes stop and wonder, “Am I overreacting?” It’s nice to have objective reinforcement!
There are a number of companies that offer notification like what the district needs. I know someone who works for one of them, and I sicced him on your district.
It’s ridiculous in this day and age, with the technology readily available, that the district would be so lame.
I am curious as to what the other options are. Is one, “Drop him at the nearest corner to my house no matter what”?
“Throw child out window in nearest residential area and let him/her figure out how to get home.”
Hell, I own a couple of local weekly newspapers these days and I’d order my staff to take a branding iron to someone’s balls until it was resolved to my satisfaction.
Real World Example: This year my oldest, Kate, was in second grade. Well and good. Midway through the first half one of our friends saw her at lunch time in her classroom all alone and crying. She’d been ordered to stay in the room and miss lunch for some reason (I think she hadn’t had a cap on her marker or somesuch). Brenda gave me a call at the office and marched Kate off to lunch and ate with her. It’s good to have friends.
I called
- the principal. I reamed him out and told him that SOMEONE was getting smacked in print and that maybe he should investigate to make sure it wasn’t him.
- the President of the School Board. We’ve become good friends since I started the papers. I informed him of the situation and he told me it was a violation of their safety rule that doesn’t allow students that young to be unsupervised at all. I told him what stories were about to land on him and he started making calls.
The teacher didn’t get fired (22 years in seniority and union membership) but she got a reprimand and was forced to write a letter of apology to us (and Kate).
After that I started recorrectly Kate’s homework and faxing it to her principal. If Miss Preston had something wrong I marked it up and made sure he was aware of it quickly. I was…irritated with her.
This happened to me in 2nd or 3rd grade. We were just about to go to recess when I was yelled at for doing something (officially, it was “Talking in the halls”, but everyone was talking). So I was sent back to sit at the “bad table” in the lunchroom.
But the teacher that took us out to recess never told my teacher I was still at the bad table, so no one came and got me. Eventually, after sitting there for an eternity (I think it was 30 minutes to an hour), a lunchlady sent me back to class. My teacher didn’t even realize I hadn’t come back after lunch.
I just want to point out that schools built without air conditioning are livable without air-conditioning because they have fancy things like high ceilings and windows. Schools built with air conditioning are built without considering air circulation in the same way, and they get HOT, quickly.