This past Thursday, I met with my son's principal. It was not a planned meeting. Oh no. I just barged right in. (Funny how I WORK by appointments but I hate having to make them for myself.)
My son was absent from school on the Monday after his school trip (horrible stomach virus) and his teachers had not given him the missed assignments. They were due on that following Friday. One teacher told my son to get his assignments from another student 5 minutes before school was dismissed. That's after he begged her for 2 1/2 days to PLEASE give him his homework and missed classwork. Five minutes was not long enough to copy down all the work he'd missed. I got mad. No, I got pissed.
I marched right into that office and told the daydreaming secretary that I wanted to speak with the principal. She asked what the problem was and I told her what had happened. She asked why I didn't pick his assignments up from school on that Monday. I told her that I didn't leave my child at home alone whilst running a 102 degree fever and puking and the diarrhea stuff going on.
I told her he'd been asking his teacher for his work since Tuesday morning and here it was, Thursday, and no work yet. I told her it was all due Friday and if he didn't get his work that day, it wouldn't get done.
Supposedly, if you don't turn in all of your work by Friday, you go to Wednesday detention for 3 hours. It wasn't going to happen and I was going to make sure it didn't.
She agreed that I would see the principal. I told her that indeed I was going to see her because I wasn't going to take NO for an answer this time.
The principal listened to me and agreed that the teachers should have given him his work, not other students. She said she would personally get his assignments from his teachers and hand deliver them to him that day. She said he would have the entire weekend to do his assignments since he was late getting them. She really was helpful and nice.
Then I brought up the topic of Destination Imagination. She said she was really disappointed that the team earned 4th place. She felt they could have done much better. I told her that lack of sleep and no adult supervision probably contributed to that.
She seemed shocked and asked me to explain.
Deep breath. I was so glad I documented it here.
I told her about everything. The kid sleeping in the hall; girls out after 11 p.m. doing cartwheels in the back parking lot of the hotel with no adult supervision; kids staying up until after 5 a.m. (bragging about it); the other 32 kids showing up at the indoors pool with one adult; the teacher taking it upon herself to move our room without permission from us (we paid for our own room and had not planned on chaperoning), then when that didn't work, her moving the 5 boys into a room next to us and telling (not asking) us to watch them; that only 3 adults were present on the trip besides the 3 teachers and stayed in rooms with 3 kids each; that the teachers stayed together in one room instead of staying with the other kids that desperately needed supervision.
I told her that every time I questioned anything, the crazy teacher would include in her conversation to me that her husband was a police officer, like she was almost trying to threaten me. I told her about how the crazy teacher would put her hand in my face and stomp her feet and yell and scream; I told her about how the bus driver said he'd never seen anything like this and would NEVER drive a bus for her again and gave her his name so she could verify what I told her. I told her about the bowling alley and how rudely she acted there and that she almost got kicked out. I gave her phone numbers to the hotel and the bowling alley and suggested she call to confirm everything I'd told her (which apparently, she did). I told her that the hotel clerk spoke to my husband about the many complaints from the other guests about those kids running wild. I told her that we were never given an itinerary or her room number. (Guess what my son brought home from school on Tuesday of THIS week? An itinerary of the competition from the previous weekend. The crazy teacher gave it to him to put in his scrapbook at school but he thought I would want to see it first. Good thinking, kiddo!)
The principal was visibly upset. Shocked. She asked why I hadn't come to see her Monday to tell her about all of this. I told her that my son was absent on Monday with a bad stomach virus. The she asked why I hadn't come in on Tuesday.
I explained that I was still quite upset and it was a good idea for me not to be too close to "that crazy teacher". I had to be in a calm frame of mind to handle this tactfully instead of the kick ass now, ask questions later frame of mind I had been in.
I told her that other parents had called me and had said they were planning to talk to her about it. I was not surprised they hadn't done so. (Some of the parents told me they were glad nothing bad happened and were concerned. Obviously not concerned enough to report it.) I told her that one of the teachers had expressed to me that she would talk to her about it too. That sure didn't happen. I didn't think it would.
The principal even let the "f" word slip a time or two. She was really really mad. "Furious" is a good word to describe her. I told her I knew exactly how she felt and that's why I had to wait until I could rationally deal with this. She said "IF I find all of this to be true, then this is bad...really bad. I mean really big and really bad."
She said she'd been led to believe that they had enough adults signed up for the trip. She said that was the only reason she and her husband didn't go. She also thought we were team parents and was shocked when I pulled out receipts from the hotel to prove that we paid our own way and went as spectators. She didn't know that we'd taken our own car either. She assumed we'd been on the bus chaperoning. She was very upset that we'd been taken advantage of. She said that it cost us a lot of money to end up doing what other parents were supposed to do and they went free.
I told her it was sooooo not about the money, it was about the security of the kids. They were never 100% secure. None of them. Including the kids we stayed next to. How can they be secure when we actually slept in a room next door? They can't.
She thanked me for being at least concerned enough for us to take on the responsibility even though we were not legally signed up to do so. There were forms that all the team parents had to fill out and we didn't have one. The principal had "assumed" we had because on her hard copy, we were listed as team parents and chaperones, but there was no paperwork attached to confirm that.
She kept saying "if this is true, blah blah blah". For a minute I thought she didn't believe me.
At that point I asked her if she needed pictures for proof. I had more than 200 of them. Oh yes, she wanted those pictures. (I burned her a copy of those pictures. I also burned 3 more copies to keep in a safe place in case she "loses" her copy.)
I told her about how the crazy teacher wanted to get her hands on my camera. The principal thinks she wanted to delete certain pictures that were taken that would prove the lack of adult supervision. I do too, since she had her own camera (on the bus) and said she wanted mine when I told her to use her own camera because I didn't loan mine out.
The principal said that she wasn't going to confront the teachers that day, but was going to wait until Friday to do that. I asked why wait? She said that all of the teachers had seen me on campus and she wanted me to remain anonymous. I told her that I had no problem with the teachers knowing I had reported it. No problem at all. She said she'd rather them not know WHO had told her.
She said she was going to talk to all the kids on the trip to find out who exactly stayed in their rooms with them. I was ok with that because I knew the answer...or I thought I did.
Turns out that some of the boys on the third floor ended up staying in some of the girls rooms right across the hall from the teacher on the same floor. (!!!) We were on the second floor with 5 other boys so we didn't know about that. (The girls didn't brag about it to me the next morning either.)
One little boy was left alone in his room and he got scared. He called his grandmother and talked to her for a few minutes right after midnight. He told her that the other boys were sleeping in some of the girls rooms. She told him to go get his teacher but he was scared that she'd yell and scream at him for waking her up so late. Poor baby.
The principal did talk to most of the kids that day and verified what I had told her that morning.
She said she didn't call them out of class, but made herself visible in the hallways and stopped them in between classes. She said she casually asked them about the trip and asked who all stayed in their room with them. She said she acted excited about it and was giving them high five's about 4th place (even though she expressed disappointment to me about 4th place). That's how she found out about the boys in the girls rooms.
She spoke with me on Friday afternoon and let me know that as of right now, no more field trips...ever. I asked her why she was punishing the kids and she said that if she couldn't trust the teachers, she couldn't send the kids off with them. I told her it still seemed to me as if she were punishing the kids. She said she was thinking only of the kids by doing that. The only way to keep them safe is to keep them at school.
She said not only was she lied to by the teachers but the parents and the kids were lied to as well. Parents sent their kids off on that trip with the understanding that they would be closely supervised and chaperoned. That obviously didn't happen.
She said the school, the teachers and even she could have been sued if anything bad had happened...and with the boys ending up in the girls rooms, something bad may well have happened that won't show up for a few months.
I was honest and told her that I had no idea that any of the boys had stayed in the girls rooms. No idea at all. The girls bragged about staying up late "talking" but they never told me they were talking to boys. It would have been impossible for me to know that anyway since we were on a different floor and she agreed with me. That's when I burst into tears thinking of what might have happened and she cried too.
I did let the principal know that if ANY of those teachers showed any kind of animosity or retaliation towards my son or any of the other kids because of my coming forward with this, they'd be dealing with me and my husband on a much more personal level and it wouldn't be pretty. In fact, it would get very ugly.
She assured me that if they did, she'd put them on administrative leave immediately. She thanked me again for coming forward. She said she would have never known if I hadn't. She asked about my husband and his feelings about it. I told her he was still not in a good frame of mind to talk rationally. He is still quite upset. She said she understood perfectly because she is still quite upset about it too.
Friday night, we received a phone call from a member of the school board. They are having an emergency board meeting at 6 p.m. tonight regarding this. They requested our presence including our son. I asked if ALL parents and kids are going to be there. He said he was calling every one whose child attended D.I. last weekend to make sure they are there with their children. He said they would have a counselor there to talk to the kids if they needed to. They mainly want to get the truth. I have some of the truth. All 200+ pictures, phone numbers and names at the hotel and bowling alley, receipts and personal conversations with those teachers etched in our minds.
Some of the kids have the truth. If they talk, they will shed more light on this. We really DON'T know everything that went on, but they do. I hope they are willing to disclose what actually happened.
The teachers will also be there. That might intimidate some of the kids into not talking. I told my son last night to just tell the truth. I told him if he made a stand, that other kids would not be so afraid to talk.
I told him to tell the school board that they stayed in a room by themselves. Tell them that his mom and dad were right next door but they were not in the same room with them. Tell them how late they actually stayed up. Tell them how I tricked him by swapping one of our room keys with his so that we could have access to his room when needed. (His teacher didn't bother giving us a room key but she made sure those kids could come and go as they pleased.) Tell them everything because he's not in trouble. The board just wants the truth.
He thinks that WE will be in trouble if he talks. He knows that an adult was supposed to be staying in their room. I told him that we are not in any kind of trouble, nor is he. I told him that we were NOT supposed to chaperone at all. I told him that we DID end up chaperoning them because we cared about them and loved them too much not to do it.
He knows that we slipped into their room during the night to check on them. He just told me so this morning. He said he saw his dad sneak in and cover him with his sleeping bag. He knows they were being watched over and he was secretly glad we did, even if it was embarassing to him when we kept popping in their room to check on them.
I'm looking forward to tonight's meeting. I don't mean that in a vindictive way. I'm looking forward to a solution so this doesn't happen again. I want those teachers to apologize to every single parent and child. I think they owe those kids and their parents that much. I think they owe the principal an apology for misleading her too.
As it stands now, even IF the kids get to go on another field trip, our son will not be going unless hubby or I go with him. That's for sure.
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