Angry at the system

Monday, March 27, 2006

I took Monday, March 20th off from work to spend the day with Tiffany. Even though we had the weekend off together, we rarely just get to hang out together. The plan was that we would take the kids to school and the babysitter for the day and head out to do some furniture shopping or whatever. In general, we planned to just cruise around.

Unfortunately, the following series of events will prevent the relaxing day off from taking place. One thing that has come up lately is the fact that we have moved from Chesapeake to Virginia Beach. W had planned to keep Skyler at Greenbrier Primary and let him finish out the year. After all, he has been there since kindergarten and the school only goes up to second grade. So, technically he is a senior. In Skyler's excitement he shared his recent move with his friends a school. Once his teacher caught wind of the move, she promptly sent home a letter stating that we needed to update his profile information with the school.

Fair enough, we would update his info card and send it back in. Gotcha! Now she had our new residence info on file she made sure to notify administration of the out of district move and requested that we contact administration to get special permission to keep Skyler in the school for the remainder of the year. Additionally, we were led to believe that this was no big deal and because it was so late in the year, Skyler would be able to finish out the year.

Administration would not allow it. Tiffany took Skyler to school and then took a trip over to the administration office. The first lady basically told her, "You don't live in this city any more and therefore don pay taxes for your child to attend school here. He will have to leave school today." Tiffany asked to speak to the supervisor. Reluctantly, the woman agreed.

While much nicer that the previous woman, this supervisor woman was no more flexible. Tiffany said, "it seems to be in our child's best interest to finish out the school year here. It is already into the final 9 weeks of the school year." She went on to say, "It says here on your request form that you offer paid tuition as an alternative. I would like to explore this further." "We don't actually offer that, it is just a generic form that we use.", said the woman. After much back and forth, the woman agreed not to make him leave school that day. He could stay until Friday and finish out the week.

That being said, Tiffany called me and asked if I could go to the new school and get the necessary enrollment information. I did. After doing so, we decided we needed to find a good way to break the news to Skyler. Something besides, "Hey, say goodbye to your friends because you don't go to school here anymore." Keeping in mind that he has no idea that he will even have to change schools this year.

We decided to go pick him up for lunch. We figured we would let him pick anywhere he wanted to go for lunch. He chose Joe's Crab Shack. He said he wanted lobster. Why not? Lobster it is! On the way to the restaurant we explained the circumstances to him in a way that we though would make sense to him. We encouraged him to try and enjoy the rest of the week. We said to get whatever he wanted from the lunch menu and get a snack if he wanted, too. We told him to get the numbers of his friends that he might want to invite to his birthday party in April.

He took the news very well. He almost seemed excited to try something new. What a huge relief. I was terrified that he might freak out and not be happy at all. So, we finished our lobster lunch and took him back to school.

At this point, it is nearly one o'clock in the afternoon and we have to pick the kids up from the sitters in 3 hours. Tiffany decided to go to the Treasure's office with me so I could get my business license for the City of Virginia Beach. That process should have taken 15 minutes. Instead, it took 1.5 hours. I had to make trips 5 between 2 buildings and 3 rooms to complete the process.

Whew! What a day. After a quick trip to The Home Depot(I don't even remember what for)we finally went and picked up the kids. Meanwhile we have to figure out how to get the kids to and from day-care now and the bus-stop.

Sometimes, the system makes me angry.

 

posted by: ndicenso @ 10:14 AM   4 Comments | Post a Comment