Maddenation
Solving the World’s Problems, One at a Time
On Monday, Pato’s school let out early because of steady rains and fear of floods. They announced the early dismissal on the radio and television. At 2:30 or so, our neighbor Tim knocked on the door and handed Pato off to Karina, who was surprised to see him home so early. Tim explained that, luckily, his wife, Martha, was listening to the radio at work just before 2:30, and had called home to tell Tim to get their son Holden (yes, named for the Catcher in the Rye protagonist). We were lucky Tim was there, because the bus lets off down the small hill near the mailboxes and the front office. Had Tim not been there, Pato would have had to cross the street by himself (or with other children, or perhaps with another kind-hearted adult). But the point is that we didn’t know to get Pato from the bus earlier than usual. We were lucky this time, but we were also pissed.
As it happens, we had an appointment with the school speech therapist the next day (we’re concerned about some of Pato’s pronunciation), so I took the opportunity to express my displeasure with the school’s inadequate notification system. (This was yet another problem we’ve had with the school, which once put Pato on the bus even though we were coming in that afternoon at the end of school and we had told them to keep him there…luckily we caught the bus before it left the school and got him off. For more on the list, call and ask us. We’re full of stories.) I couldn’t believe the “I’m rubber, you’re glue” attitude the secretary was giving me. I went in there expecting an apology, maybe some bureaucracy, some sloughing, but I did not expect to be insulted and treated like an imbecile. I did not expect to hear the same lame excuses again and again, and to be told that it was my fault that I didn’t know the school was closing early (the floods, it turns out, didn’t come, so the closing was alarmist), or it was the bus driver’s fault for letting my kid off the bus without a parent there, but it was hard to tell at Carriage Hill, since there are so many kids getting off and so many kids waiting. To make a long story short, voices were raised, I did not back down, I hypothesized tragedy and was told that even in that case, the school would be blameless, etc. I was livid. I asked for the superintendent’s name and number. I suggested that maybe the school could set up an email mailing list for parents and could shoot off an email when the school closed early. I was told that the secretaries were so overworked that they couldn’t even do that, they weren’t going to do that, they already did enough by calling the radio and tv stations. The school only had two phone lines and 400 kids and there was no way they could call everyone, and, no, kindergarteners were no more naive than fifth graders, and they told the kids that they should call home if they needed to, and my son did not step forward and say he needed to call, and, yes, he should know, and the kindergarten teachers call parents who come to pick up their kids, but not bus-kids’ parents, and no, they cannot call me specifically along with the pick-up parents, and on and on and on.
When I was about to explode, the principal showed up. I’ve met him before, and I don’t like him. He seems to me to be a guy who wants to slough off every responsibility. When we had to see him about Pato’s behavior problems earlier in the year, he spent a lot of energy being negative and insinuating that bad parenting was the cause of the kid’s hyperactivity. When a friend of ours, who’s a dance professor at OU, wanted to give a dance show/lesson to the kids at the school (for free), the principal wasn’t interested. This same dancer has a handicapped daughter who was in the school for one year, and had other bad experiences with the principal, who keeps the handicapped children in the basement of the school building…
And he started off in his typical way: Nothing we could have done. You need to raise your kid better. I asked him (speaking loudly now, practicing my best bug-eyed, borderline-psychotic Dad imitation), “What if you get the news that a kindergartner of yours got hurt or died because he was let off the bus an hour early without his parents even knowing? Still not your fault? You wash your hands, tell the parents they sure screwed up, shoulda been watching tv at work?” And back and forth, me thinking, “this guy’s an idiot,” him probably thinking, “I’m perfectly right.” I explained several times that I was willing to accept the school’s suggestion that I teach my son his phone number, make sure he knows to go to a neighbor’s house if we’re not home, etc. But I wanted to know what the school could also do to alleviate this problem. I suggested again that the school could set up an email notification system and fire off an email to parents when the school was going to close early. His response was, “What if they’re not reading their email at the time?” Idiot. I detailed it out for him: “What if they’re at work and, surprise, not watching tv or listening to the radio? It’s not the perfect method, it’s just one more way to try to get the news out. Some people, like me, work on their computers with their email downloading all day. They get an alert when a new message shows up.” Then he tried the “secretaries don’t have time to do that” excuse, so, exasperated, I said, “I’ll set it up. I’ll do everything. All the secretaries will have to do is go to a web page, type in the message, and hit send. It’ll take about a minute.”
Did I say “to make a long story short” a few paragraphs ago? Sorry.
He began by brusquely accepting my offer, “Maybe I will ask you to do that.” And back and forth until I was sitting in his office and he was showing me the school’s web site (civilly now, me too) and asking how it’d work, and then I was on the speaker phone with the guy (at OU) who runs the web host for the school, and so now I’m working on making a foolproof email list for the school, where parents can subscribe and ubsubscribe at will from the school’s web page and the secretaries can just pound out messages and send them with one click. It’s almost done. I’ll let you know when it’s operational (I’m using a free service that comes recommended by a lot of blog geeks).
Now, don’t you think the world is a slightly better place?
Patrick • Stuffs • 01/09/04 • 3 comments
Comments
Dad • 01/09/04 • 11:07 PM:Reminds me of the time I had to pretend I was almost ready to kill the store manager if he didn’t give me David’s backpack for the agreed to price. (You would have been proud of my bug-eyed, borderline-psychotic , slightly green-tinted skin, David Banner, “You won’t like me when I get angry” look.) It also reminds me of the time I wouldn’t let your math teacher talk me out of letting you take the advanced class. (The rest is history; sort of.)
It seems to me most people are full of excuses and try to get you to agree with them that, “They couldn’t really have done anything else under the circumstances.” They fall back on non-reasons like, “We’ve always done it that way,” or “That’s what our procedural manual says to do.” That what they’ve always done may be flawed is not what they want to hear or have to respond to.
Of course, it is a good idea to teach children how to respond to unusual situations, remember his address and phone, go to a neighbor when you’re not home, etc. Nonetheless, the school should have responded much more favorably to your questions, and at least agreed to consider the problem rather than dismiss you out of hand.
Good job in persevering until you broke through. Offering to help is a great way to break down the barriers to communication (another way is to ask for help). Yes, I sense the the world is a slightly better place for your efforts.
Patrick • 01/16/04 • 10:34 PM:The end of the story is this (which the principal has already “messed up” a little, but, hey, it was a simple little job). Most of the text there is mine. So go ahead and sign up to find out when Pato gets out of school early. You can IM or call me or Karina, just in case we didn’t get the message. By the way, it took a while to explain to the principal how to use the thing (he kept trying to edit the page, and I kept telling him, no, you send the email through the website, and he kept having to find the school site in among his bookmarks, where the school site was called “Netscape search” along with seven other bookmarks of the same name), but in the end, I think he liked it and was thankful. Today the notice came home from Pato’s school inviting parents to sign up.
Dan • 01/17/04 • 1:23 AM:Your persistence and diligence is commendable. I bet the CSS in that site is spot-on perfect, too.
Seriously, this kind of thing makes me proud to be your brother. It reminds me to get off my butt and move sometimes.
By the way, everybody else, Pat helped me with the Makris’s site, minehillmotors.com. I couldn’t have done it half as well without him taking time out of his busy schedule to fix my mistakes and to yell at me for being lazy. Thanks, buddy!
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
Please capitalize your name properly and use the same information each time you comment. We will not send you spam, and your email address will not be posted.