No offence intended JR, but I think it's time for you to get your Masters in Administration and work your way up to principal or get elected to the school board and make all those common sense changes instead of griping about them. Almost every stupid idiotic rule (and there are plenty) has come down because idiots in school systems all over the USA have bent every common sense rule to the extreme and got called on it, then the parents sued said school systems for discrimination, etc. It's a no win situation. A significant portion of the parents of those kids act and dress much worse than the kids themselves. If the rules aren't in place, the kids run amock because a significant portion of parents refuse to behave as parents. If the rules are in place, everybody bitches and moans about it like you just did. School systems are damned if they do and damned if they don't.
Oh please...
Here we go again with another 'poor little abused schoolteacher/administrator' bunch of ****...
Yeah... right... like the school up near Dallas that has a PRE-K kid in solitary confinement in the LIBRARY because "his hair is too long and doesn't meet the dress code"... which their district defines as "set up to enforce standards to prepare students for a career in business, in which proper attire is a requirement". Sorry, but I call BS... I said it before and I'll say it again...
it's not the school's job to play fashion police-- it's the school's job to educate kids.
Yeah, I know, it's hard to do when kids push the limits... Kids wear stuff to shock or distract or whatever, to test the limits. If it's a problem, handle it and get over it. If it's not, don't go looking for a fight and trying to impose some 1950's Leave it to Beaver BS on someone else just because "we're the school and we can-- we're highly educated credentialed education experts and we say so"... Geez, and then these *** clowns wonder why nobody takes them seriously.
My sister is a band director-- used to work for the district here in town. During convocation, she'd complain about the THREE HOURS of dress code lectures they'd get on the dress code rules, enforcement, teacher requirements, etc. She left this district and went to work for another one 35 miles south. Her first day of convocation, the Superintendent (who was a Phd Doctor instead of an urban cowboy like ours) moved to the discussion of dress code issues. She put her hand over her face, prepared for the prototypical three-hour lecture like here. He said this: "If the clothes have holes, they must be patched. No vulgar or offensive or cursing slogans on the clothing. If it's distracting, or if in doubt, send them to the principal or to me, and I'LL HANDLE IT. Ok, next item on the agenda is.... " She was shocked. Know what, IT WORKS! Her school has at most 1/10 the problems with dress code and behavior that we have, and it's a
poor school (socially disadvantaged, whatever you call it, lower class, etc.)
I drive a bus. I see plenty of crap. I also run a VERY tight ship and tell the kids in NO UNCERTAIN TERMS what the rules are, and strictly and consistently enforce them. Know what, it works! I have WAY less problems on my bus than 99% of the other drivers. My kids file on, sit down, shut up (ok talk quietly) and stay seated, and if they don't, I'm give 'em a warning or a lecture when they get off, or move them to the front seat after a couple chances and tell them if they're gonna act like a six year old they'll sit where six year olds sit-- IN THE FRONT! They don't like that; I put the responsibility on them and MAKE IT STICK and so they shape up so they can do what they want without me jumping on them. It's all common sense stuff. I've had more than a few defensive mothers call me for correcting a child, and I tell them "too bad,
I am driving that bus and it's
MY *** on the line if anything happens; so the rules will be enforced consistent with district policy and if you don't like it, you can always drive them to and from school." Some folks don't like it; too bad for them. I keep it to common sense safety stuff-- rules for rules sake is a BUG, not a feature... too bad the school hasn't learned that.
You'd think after a Federal lawsuit (which the district
lost BTW) where they tried to force a Native American kindergartener to cut off his ponytail or, barring that, force him to wear it inside the collar of his shirt, that maybe JUST MAYBE these highly educated highly credentialed educators would figure out that a little common sense is in order and they should ask themselves "is this the hill I want to die on" and just figure out 'no harm no foul' and leave well enough alone-- save their time, effort, and energy on more important things that truly ARE a problem?? Nah... too much to ask...
I guess some people are just slow learners though-- you'd think they'd have figured that out after the LAST big lawsuit that the school decided to quit fighting and settle on... when they refused to let a girl in school for wearing a T-shirt to school every day that said "My parent's went to Hoover dam and all I got was this dam T-shirt" (note spelling verbatim) The school ordered her to report to ISS every day or change shirts; her Dad refused and took her home every day. Daddy now has a new house, a new swimming pool, a new guest bungelow behind the pool, and a palm tree garden planted all the way around the pool, a new barn, and five acres of land... guess where he got the money?? But still this sort of idiotic bull**** continues...
Of course expecting more common sense out of our highly educated highly credentialed educators is probably expecting too much... like expecting them to actually get their fourth graders out of the friggin' hallway and out onto the bus ramp before half the buses in the district are halfway across town and the other half are snarled up waiting for them to come back and get the kids... Maybe they were too busy having a dress code spot-check crisis in the hallway to actually get the kids out of the hallway and onto the buses...
I need a friggin' margarita...:dark::dark::dark::y:
OL JR