I pulled my first child out of her first school in Kindergarten. I kind of have a "3 strikes and you're out" policy and they hit three pretty quickly.
First, the teacher (not a volunteer, student, etc. - but the person directly responsible for educating) sent home a handwritten note asking me to "complet" and return the "packact" at my "urleest convenyance." English is her first and only language.
Next, the school sent home class pictures with "Kindergarden Class" proudly printed across the bottom. They refused to re-print with correct spelling despite several parent complaints.
The last straw was when the school used funding not to improve the building, upgrade supplies, help teachers, etc - but to install a massive sign at the front of the building. The sign was a picture of a fetus that said "I have a heartbeat at 8 weeks" on it.
The school lost a significant number of students after that stunt - mine was one of them. I'm not the only parent with "WTF" school moments.
One Reddit user asked:
Parents of reddit, What did your child's school do that made you say "you can't be serious..."?
and yeah ... wow.
A Working Lunch
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Not me, but a coworker was talking about this today.
Her daughter and her schoolmates are being assigned work to do during lunch breaks. They are doing the zoom call classrooms.
She said her daughter is skipping lunch sometimes because she's working on the assignment. The girl is 9.
No Excess Running
Our elementary school (same one my wife and I went to) has a nice hill next to the playground that leads down to the outfield of a little league field. Kids for decades have been rolling down that hill during recess. Not allowed to do that anymore. Not allowed to run "excessively" during recess anymore either.
I wish I was making any of this up. Sadly it's true.
Probably school policy because parents today get upset about everything. Running too fast could lead to injuries which could lead to angry parents, which teachers and schools want to avoid.
Dont blame the school, blame over protective parents and a culture of blaming others for your misfortunes. These kinds of rules are made out of liability fears.
Lefties Don't Deserve Abuse
My mum was furious with my infant and junior school because two of the teachers would not let me write with my left hand, they forced me to write with my right hand...which was impossible. This was in the early 80s.
My mom flipped her sh*t when she came to pick me up from preschool (around 1980) and found my left arm tied behind my back. The teacher thought it perfectly acceptable to force me to use my right hand.
My mom was left handed, born in the 1950's, USA, they tied her left hand behind her back until she learned to write with her right hand.
Academic Awards
Not as a parent, but my high school eliminated academic awards, because it was somehow unfair on the kids who did not get one. They kept athletic awards, of course.
This happened to me. It was 6 years ago, and I'm still pissed off. Both the other smart kids got awards already, so it was a shoe-in for me.
The academic award was always the biggest f*cking trophy as well. And then they just went "By the way, we aren't doing academic awards this year."
Like WHAT? They literally did *handwriting* awards, but not an academic one. ugh.
"Art Show"
They had an art project which went really well. The kids were really proud of their work and parents were impressed. So did they let the kids take their artwork home to be admired by the family?
Hell no, they decided to put the projects in an "art show" and make parents BUY their children's work from the school as a fundraiser. Bear in mind this hadn't been the deal from the start - they just decided to hold a bunch of 8 year olds' work hostage because it was apparently surprisingly good.
Some parents objected to this on principle and demanded they shouldn't have to pay to enjoy the fruits of their child's labour. Their children's work was not included in the art show, but hung up in the office where children weren't allowed to go, and grudgingly released once all the other works were sold.
Our family had fallen on hard times and couldn't afford to pay $20 for our kids own intellectual property, so had to explain that her art wasn't going to be in the show with all her friends' to show off to their families, but would be hidden away with all the other poor kids' work.
A Forgotten Five Year Old
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They forgot my five year old daughter on the bus the second day of kindergarten.
The daycare called (that's where the school bus dropped her off so I could pick her and her sister up together after work) to ask if she was sick because she never got off the bus. I freaked and said no, called the school, they said they didn't know where she was.
They called me back 15 min later saying she had fallen asleep on the bus and didn't get off at her stop - THE BUS HAD GONE BACK TO THE DEPOT AND PARKED.
It was august ... in Georgia.
I was 37 weeks pregnant at the time so how this didn't send me in to preterm labor I will never know. Luckily everyone ended up ok but we promptly took her out of that school.
19th Century Accuracy
I'll never forget how furious my mom was with the school one time.
In eighth grade, so middle school keep that in mind, we had a history project where everyone drew a name of a historical figure out of a hat, you did a report on them. Pretty standard. They asked all of us to dress up as the person we drew and made the costume portion 25% of our grade. Already that's super stupid, obviously putting emphasis on the completely wrong portion for an academic project. Well I drew Harriet Tubman...
I obviously do not own any 19th century clothing, and my family wasn't going to spend a bunch of time tracking some down to go spend money on that I would wear for a five minute report and never again especially since it would be a dress and I'm a dude. So I went to the theater department at school and asked if they had anything that would work, they found some dresses that looked old and I picked one, borrowed some leather boots, and wore a wig.
Not good enough. I got 0/25 points for my costume because it wasn't period accurate enough. Barely missed any marks on any other portion so I got a C purely because in the mid 2000s I did not own a 19th century dress. Plenty of other kids got docked to similar levels for similar reasons. There was an uproar from parents but nothing ever came from it because according to the principal teachers are free to grade however they wish
Bullies In My Home
My mom and I were furious about this.
I was bullied pretty hard for no other reason than being shy in first grade and the sh*t stuck.
In fifth grade 5 people waited for me on the way home from school to beat me. We reported them to the school and police. (We were also angry with the police officer who shrugged off that they said 'We will kill you.' like it was just a joke. Yes 12 year olds. But still not a joke to the kid who hears this. And my school district was a really f*cked up one.)
Our class teacher wanted to suspend them and wrote something like "the parent-teacher-conference has decided to suspend them for 3 days". She got told that she should have written "propose" cause the conference does not decide.
The ONLY thing the school made happen is: They forced me to invite them to my house to make friends with them and lay off our differences.
So, instead of my bullies who beat me bloody getting sanctioned, I was forced by my school to invite them to my private home. Feels like I was punished. Despite all my moms efforts of talking with the school and that woman is a f*cking dragon.
My friend had to do a similar thing, but her mother wasn't having it. She went to our headteacher and said if that kid steps foot in her house he probably won't leave. It seemed to shut the school up.
Fatherless Servants
For fathers day the kindergarten had donuts and tea with the dad's if they came in, most of them did.
The kids that didn't have dads (or dads that did not show up) were told they had to act as waiters and take the orders of the kids and dads who showed up.
Oddly enough nobody really said anything. Most of the kids didn't seem to notice how f*cked it was, even the ones serving
As a teacher, this is the first to make my blood boil. I always make arrangements for kids on Mother's Day and Father's Day who don't have that parent for whatever reason. I've had kids with two moms or dads, a dead parent, or a parent who was a deadbeat and left the mom with her two sons.
A Highly Visible And Distinct Blood Stain
Several years ago my daughter was an 8th grade cheerleader and they were required to wear their uniforms to school on game days whether home game or away game. They traveled to away games directly from school and did not come home first.
Imagine my surprise when I showed up at the away football game at 6pm that evening to find my daughter cheerleading on the sidelines in her uniform with a highly visible and distinct blood stain on her skirt. She had an accident very typical for middle-school girls and had asked the office to call me for a change of clothes --- they did not allow her to call me and she'd been told that she had to wear her uniform and she didn't have a cell phone to call me with (they weren't allowed at school in those days).
The school made no effort to contact me so that I could give her a change of clothes for a class while I washed and dried her skirt ... nor did a teacher dig into the uniform closet to pull out a spare skirt for her to change in to. She was subjected to a level of humiliation that I can only imagine but she showed a brave face and refused to let it break her.
She marched in band for her freshmen through senior years and was not interested in cheerleading after that year. They lost her trust and my respect, and I've been pissed off at that school secretary, principal, and cheerleading coach ever since .... I would have thought that at least one teacher would have intervened.
Illegal CC's
My public school system sent out an email to all parents who had kids in school in recent years that asked what religion everyone was, what everybody's income was and other nicely illegal things for a school to ask. Because that's a good idea.
No, seriously all the questions asked were illegal for them to demand (and demand they did) answers to.
Better yet they made it all one email with all the parents of the district cc'd so this would have been information given to all of the other families too. They were actually offended when they were ripped into for their actions.
There were certainly other "you can't be serious" moments in that school system but certainly that was the crown jewel.
Merry Christmas
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When I enrolled my daughter in 2nd grade, I meticulously filled out a form in triplicate, stating that she is severely allergic to pine. One copy went to the nurse, one to the school files and the last to her teacher.
So imagine my surprise when in December, she got off the school bus, with red, running eyes, puffy face, wheezing, with a stuffy nose and her throat swollen badly enough that she could barely speak.
She refused to say what was wrong in the emergency room until I finally told her "I KNOW you were around pine. What happened?"
Her teacher decided the class was going to make Christmas tree ornaments out of pine cones and pine twigs and told them to keep it a secret because it was a gift for their parents. My daughter didn't want to spoil the secret.
I went to the school the next morning and raised hell. Not ONLY did they knowingly expose my daughter to an allergen that could have killed her, they didn't call me OR send her to the nurse when she reacted.
And to put the icing on the cake, we don't even CELEBRATE Christmas!
She was on medication for a week and the teacher let her make me a card instead. I went to the school board demanding more attention be paid to students medical files, and they updated their policy the next semester.
Can't Say "It"
When I was in high school, my English teacher decided she hated the word "it." She decided that we students were no longer allowed to use the word "it" in our writing, even as part of a direct quote.
She would dock ten points for every use of the word "it" and she wouldn't stop at zero.
It Made The Pastor Mad
A social-emotional learning program here got banned because there was a lesson that was about busting gender stereotypes and included the example that boys can play with dolls.
It made a pastor mad and he brought it to the school board.
They Hid The "Worst" Pupils
This will be lost among all the top posts but when she was younger my daughter was having a hard time at school due to her mother leaving home. As such they place her in the ''special'' class. Basically a dumping ground for ''trouble makers'' and special need children. One day all the parents of children in this class were told not to bring their children in on a particular day, as the teachers will be unavailable that day.
Imagine the surprise when we found out after, that this was the day Ofsted [Government School Inspectors] visited and gave the school a outstanding [best] rating.
They literally hid their worse pupils from inspection.
I moved my daughter to a different school soon after and she got proper help for her issues.
The Guidance Counselor Refused To Do Their Job
The guidance counselor who was in charge of making class schedules wouldn't give my middle daughter a math class so she could graduate. Daughter had qualified for a full Gates Grant. Fought with the school for eighteen months. With the principal, vice principal, guidance counselor, superintendent, and school board. My daughter did not graduate.
Fast forward eight years. Same counselor refused to fill out the form the NCAA requires for students to receive athletic scholarships. Here's how this works: student finishes all NCAA requirements and is then given access to a form to give counselor.
From February to the end of May, daughter prints form five times explaining to counselor each time what it's for. Same routine. No one in the school district will force him to do his job. Finally her coach goes to his office and literally stands over his shoulder to make him do his job.
She gets her scholarship, but misses out on all the full ride ones because those colleges wouldn't wait. Two years later the new counselor finds two more offer letters in his desk that my daughter never even saw.
Why did these two things happen?
Poor students in our district are throw-aways. You're poor? You're not going anywhere. Even if the reason you're not going anywhere is their refusal to do their jobs.
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