Yesterday’s special was the kind man who got me my car back. Clearly the good. I’ll leave you to decide today’s feature.
This morning I got a call from the Welcome Center, the district office to help people with things I can’t. The legalities of guardianship, establishing residency, et cetera. A parent had attempted to register her fifteen-year-old son at a nearby high school and been refused because he was in the eighth grade at the last school.
She said I had refused to register him because he’s fifteen. That’s high-school age. When they haven’t been retained or just kept out of school, anyway.
I hadn’t talked to anyone that day or in the past week about that subject.
Turns out, she was in back in January. She registered her thirteen-year-old (who, as of today, is in school for the first time in two weeks), and asked if she should register her fifteen-year-old. I didn’t ask what grade he was. I just said he would probably be a high school student.
Does that count as “attempting” to register? Does that count as a refusal? And where the HELL has the boy been since January?
Sitting at home. While mom “tried” to get him into school. Sounds like she tried damned hard, doesn’t it? But “nobody wanted him,” she said. What a surprise. Poor kid’s special ed (only he’s not, mom didn’t notice they decided it was his lack of time in class impeding his progress, not a learning disorder) held back twice, hasn’t been in school in months, got long-term suspended from his last school for drug-use on campus…
But he needs to be in school. Can we all agree on that?
After she left, she called the Welcome Center to complain that I was “so rude.”
Well, yeah. I probably was. In a very polite, “I need to inform you that if either of your children misses one of the last thirty days of school, I will be calling the police” kind of way.