The academic year has just begun and I’m already mad as hell!
The furor began yesterday when I learned our kids were no longer eligible for bus service because – according to transportation software – we live too close to school.
We found out about this yesterday.
School started today.
I’d bet good money that this data analysis wasn’t just pulled together in the last 48 hours. They knew about this and were withholding the information so that we wouldn’t have any time to try to challenge it.
Angry calls to the district’s business manager were met with this response:
“I take total responsibility.”
What does that mean?
Are you going to pay for my friend’s health insurance benefits because she now has to cut her hours in order to be available to pick up her children?
Are you going to provide crossing guards at every single intersection along the .9-mile route to school? You claim that six-year-olds are mature enough to make that walk on their own.
Are you going to provide an alternative to pay for transportation if parents cannot – after a whopping one-day’s notice – rearrange their schedules to pick up their children two hours before the traditional work day ends? So far, you’ve made no mention of that option.
It’s like you just dropped an email bomb…and ran!
Add this to the fact that you’ve done very little to communicate anything about what supplies our children need for school this year, and what they’ll need to keep them nourished throughout the day.
We’re in one of the highest tax brackets in the nation and yet we have to provide all of our own materials and settle for a hot lunch only once/month. In fact, as I just learned by reading last year’s newsletter (no such letter has yet been written for this year), children are encouraged to go home for lunch. Because we are all idle at mid-day and can afford to shuttle our kids home and back within a one-hour time frame?
Do you even care what we think? Do you even know who we are?
Are you, as education advocates, supportive of a dialog with parents in the district?
Hello?
Can you hear us?
Unfortunately, the only thing that may loosen your collective ear wax is a legal document entitled, “_______ vs. Board of Education.”
It would be sad if it has to come to that.
Hurty Words 