I thought you'd like to see the replys:
-----Original Message-----
Hello Mrs. Service,
Hello Mrs. Service,
I am so sorry that you were upset with out guidelines for AIMS testing today. Unfortunately, we are provided with quite extensive directions from the Arizona Department of Education, and we have to make many changes to our school day in order to schedule the testing and to establish a sound testing environment for all our students. Three of those testing requirements are: 1. Students must be here ready to test on time, by 9:00 at Neely, but students who are absent are given the opportunity to do makeups on other days; 2. We cannot interrupt classrooms during testing; and, 3. We do not allow parent visitors/volunteers on campus during the AIMS testing weeks. These are precautions that we are expected to make, in order to retain the correct atmosphere and ensure the security of the testing. Neely does normally allow unusually flexible parent visitation on our campus, unlike many other schools, and most days many parents are welcomed into the classrooms and to have lunch with students, but we do have to adjust this policy during the two weeks of the year of AIMS testing. I am very sorry that this was poor timing for your exciting family news, but Olivia was merely pointing out that she could not interrupt the class and that visitors were not allowed, since testing was underway when you called. It is very difficult to interrupt a class for one parent and not another, or to allow one parent onto campus, when all others have been told that it is not possible during testing week. Obviously, in the case of an emergency, exceptions would need to be made to these rules, but I hope that Zachary was happy to hear the good news from you first hand when he arrived home today. In retrospect, it does seem that if you had wanted to come in and leave a message at the office to go into Mrs. Davidson's mailbox, Zachary could have received the message in the afternoon, but it might be better for him to hear it face to face from you later. Please do not hesitate to come in to see me, or call me if you would like to discuss this situation further.
Dr. C.,
Principal
My reply:
Dear Dr. C.,
Thank you for the quick reply. I was aware of the guidelines for AIMS, I am just against them. My child’s education is just as paramount to me as is his emotional health and family relations are. It’s obvious that Neely Traditional is just upholding the strict regulations and that this complaint should find its way more appropriately to the Department of Education. Even having this distain for the intense military regulations surrounding AIMS, I was still willing to respect the test and asked about ways to do so.
As you have written, there were test appropriate ideas we could have come up with but Olivia was not willing to offer any such ideas after I had made the commitment to have him told at school as soon as possible because this family event was that important to this ten year old. (We actually left him on Neely’s front step wiping away tears over this!!) To make it very clear I ‘m not attacking Olivia, I am just restating the facts just as she was just restating the rules.
The full problem arises when it is made clear to me that my rights to speak to my son are negated over testing.
I will be posting this complaint to the school board, blogs, and the Department of Education as a reminder that rules without allowance for common sense and understanding will always bull doze the rights and hearts of parents and children causing alarm, sadness, frustration and just unsatisfactory testing conditions which is the very thing the rules were placed there to protect them from.
It is a shamefully sad day when other parents tell me it would have been better for my son to have just not attended school that day. What?? This is about our children FIRST! School is for the children and not the children for the school!
I realize that your position as principal is to diffuse situations and find solutions. The point was that he didn’t want to be and shouldn’t be the last to know about this important event in his young life. I genuinely do thank you for your advice in a woman to woman way of what “might have been better for him”, but really that’s my call as his mother, knowing and loving my sweet, kind hearted son best. Why would I have foreseen a problem to the simple request that he be told at lunch time?
I am grateful to your many, many hours put into the school on my child’s behalf. You are a helpful, understanding person and I wish it had been you I had talked to at the front desk.
Unfortunately, the situation will always sit with me as you put it, ‘In RETROPECT, THERE WERE OPTIONS’.
Sincerely,
Roseanne Service
Thank you for the quick reply. I was aware of the guidelines for AIMS, I am just against them. My child’s education is just as paramount to me as is his emotional health and family relations are. It’s obvious that Neely Traditional is just upholding the strict regulations and that this complaint should find its way more appropriately to the Department of Education. Even having this distain for the intense military regulations surrounding AIMS, I was still willing to respect the test and asked about ways to do so.
As you have written, there were test appropriate ideas we could have come up with but Olivia was not willing to offer any such ideas after I had made the commitment to have him told at school as soon as possible because this family event was that important to this ten year old. (We actually left him on Neely’s front step wiping away tears over this!!) To make it very clear I ‘m not attacking Olivia, I am just restating the facts just as she was just restating the rules.
The full problem arises when it is made clear to me that my rights to speak to my son are negated over testing.
I will be posting this complaint to the school board, blogs, and the Department of Education as a reminder that rules without allowance for common sense and understanding will always bull doze the rights and hearts of parents and children causing alarm, sadness, frustration and just unsatisfactory testing conditions which is the very thing the rules were placed there to protect them from.
It is a shamefully sad day when other parents tell me it would have been better for my son to have just not attended school that day. What?? This is about our children FIRST! School is for the children and not the children for the school!
I realize that your position as principal is to diffuse situations and find solutions. The point was that he didn’t want to be and shouldn’t be the last to know about this important event in his young life. I genuinely do thank you for your advice in a woman to woman way of what “might have been better for him”, but really that’s my call as his mother, knowing and loving my sweet, kind hearted son best. Why would I have foreseen a problem to the simple request that he be told at lunch time?
I am grateful to your many, many hours put into the school on my child’s behalf. You are a helpful, understanding person and I wish it had been you I had talked to at the front desk.
Unfortunately, the situation will always sit with me as you put it, ‘In RETROPECT, THERE WERE OPTIONS’.
Sincerely,
Roseanne Service
4 comments:
Go Roseanne go! :)
awesome...he is going down...
I just had to reschedule my ultrasound date for this very same reason as if fitting it into my husbands schedule wasn't hard enough. Now we can't find out till monday. I think the problem is larger than the State however, as these tests are guided by federal law and funding.
NICE! YOU ROCK ROSEANNE!
~gab
Post a Comment