The local school district has decided that parents must receive the principal's imprimatur before scheduling medical or dental appointments, and has made this known in an edict on its home page.
Beginning 2008, a medical or dental appointment must have PRIOR APPROVAL of the principal or his/her designee in order to be excused, except in the case of an emergency. Upon returning to school a proper excuse must be presented from the attending physician/dentist.
Please use the form below to let the school know of scheduled medical/dental appointments.
Public schools are rife with bureaucratic nonsense. For example, parents here are issued two passes for the school year to eat lunch with their children. Once your two passes are gone, that's it: no more lunch visits with your kid. This is minor, yes, but still silly. Whatever happened to parents being welcomed into their kids' schools?
Bureaucracy is part and parcel of anything run by government, but what on earth qualifies or entitles an elementary school principal to the power of approval on medical decisions for my children?
One of the fellows I work with suggested that "notification" might have been a better approach, rather than "approval". Perhaps this is so. However, given the choice of words taken in combination with the way they were formatted, I think the choice of words was very deliberate, and the implied threat is very clear. Don't get the principal's permission to have your child miss a couple of hours of school to go to the doctor or dentist, and your child doesn't get to make up any work missed and is stuck with an unexcused absence. Three of those, and you get a nice form letter complete with the threat of criminal prosecution under truancy law.
I understand the necessity of providing a doctor's note after the fact, because God knows you can't have "unexcused" absences. If the butts aren't in the seats, after all, the school loses money. And that's all this is about.
Twenty five years ago, I attended the same elementary school that my kids do now. I remember using books that were five, six, seven years old and worn completely out. I remember some of the desks were in dire need of replacement. I remember that the teachers were some of the lowest-paid in the country, which was sometimes reflected in the quality of instruction, but there were also many excellent teachers who worked hard with their kids despite the abysmal fiduciary reward. I remember how tough it was to function under such financial conditions.
I also remember that the atmosphere was much more open and welcoming, despite my "stuck in prison" mentality. Parents were encouraged to participate, and welcomed into the building. Hell, the school staff begged parents to get involved in their kids' education.
Now, the prison atmosphere is a much more apt description. There's a huge glass wall just inside the entryway to keep people out, and parents have much more limited access to their children during the school day. The first day of school results not just in reunions with friends and new books to take home, but rather in form after form detailing the requirements and, of particular note, restrictions that will be imposed on students and parents alike.
The attitude seems to have shifted to one of "We own them from 8:30 to 3:30, so you just butt out and let us do our jobs." What the hell? I know that teachers deal with tons of kids whose parents are content to do just that, and the teachers complain incessantly about it. "We're not the parents. We're not here to teach them how to behave. We're supposed to teach them, not raise them." And they're absolutely right. Despite this, parents are being continually edged out of the process as their children are taught more about bureaucratic compliance and paperwork than the Three R's.
Homeschooling is looking like our only alternative. I wish to God I could still afford to put them in the local Catholic school, which was a much warmer environment, and far more welcoming. My daughter's name was known to the principal, as was mine. Now, it seems as if my kids are just faces in the crowd, numbers to be counted, and I'm to be kept on the outside looking in as much as practicable. Not putting my kids in the school that I think is best for them due to financial mistakes has to be my greatest failure as a parent thus far.
Update: It would appear that this is not only district policy, but state law. Relevant code is here, at 4(e). The required imprimatur must be obtained from the "superintendent of the school district or his designee," so I suppose the superintendent here has designated principals or their designees, a logical action. I can't find any reference to suggest that this is new, so I can only assume that the district has only now decided to enforce it.
This doesn't change the content of my rant all that much, other than to lay some of the blame for this particular issue at the feet of the morons in the Mississippi Legislature, and to wonder why they thought that superintendents are somehow entitled or qualified to be involved in medical decisions for my child.
We went to open house for Sarah's school last night, and the classroom was very nicely made up. I think she's going to have a good time this year. And this year we're allowed to come to lunch once a month, not just twice a year....
Update the second: The school district has updated their notice on the front page to reflect that the requirement is state law. I believe it's safe to assume that this change was made in response to some negative feedback.
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