Maybe It's Just Me

While my local school system is in the public throes of who is really running the show, I get stuck on the meaning of words.

Now that freedom of speech issues have finally reached the point that the HCDS police are called to action, I wonder where has everyone been all of these years.

I will always vividly recall the day at Mann Middle School when I was told by the principal that if I came on campus without checking in to her office first, I would be charged with trespassing.

The fact that I was making a big squawk about my repeated attempts to address issues with my son’s education and the fact that this threat came the day after I wrote a complaint letter gave me reason to believe that the 3 months of previous same actions on my part were now under a different line of scrutiny.

At least I didn’t have the security called on me. Instead, I called the Director of ESE while sitting in the office. I had the number saved because I used it a lot over the years. This may have saved my immediate arrest. It was a gutsy move on my part, because Directors have as much say over what a principal does or does not do as I did. But there is something to say about safety in numbers, and how many people know.

I was not accustom to this type of treatment, or rather, the treatment was getting worse. I did not think the setting was safe for my son. So when I said I was keeping him home until we could have another of those countless meanings, the veiled threat of truancy was thrown out. Knowing the absolute power of the school District, I made sure I obtained a Dr's excuse to protect me.

As the days and weeks played out, since I had become learned in the ways of paper warfare, my documentation along with proof that “they” had changed theirs, probably saved me from the usual bulldozed flattening that most parents end up with.

Taking on the system means that you must have documentation and make sure some one else has a copy of it too.

Yesterday I posted the link to some probable cause affidavits.

One of the sentences struck me as odd, so I revisited it today. On page two, it says that the teacher’s strikes (to the kid who was an “equivalent 11 to 14 month old reference motor skills”) “were often prompted by an incorrect answer to a question, not any disciplinary problem or wrong doing. In that sense, there was no legal justification for her to strike the child.”

And then on page 3, we find: the teacher’s statement of “you gonna kick me, I’m gonna kick you (pg 2),” “implies revenge as a motive and a desire to hurt of cause pain to … rather than any educational purpose.”

I am thankful that the writer was able to determine that there was no educational purpose for the actions the teacher took upon the kid. It must have been a tough legal decision to write that out.