Thinking about school conferences this morning reminded me of some of my “best” school stories. Julie and I were talking the other day about folks who simply can’t believe that a school (or school system) would retaliate against parents. People just don’t believe how ignorant, vindictive, retaliatory, and yes, abusive, school systems or staff can be to beleaguered parents. I have heard unbelievable stories from parents, and of course, I have a few of my own stories to share.


For six months in late ’94 and early ’95, my family added Cindy, a 14-year-old girl from the Philippines. We should never have added this child, as my family was already on complete overload at this time, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Anyway, this blog is about school, not the reality that we added a child when we had no business doing so.


Before Cindy arrived, my husband and I met with the middle school staff. Because Cindy was chronologically the age of an 8th grader, that is where they wanted to place her. Never mind the fact that she was in the 6th grade in the Philippines; that she had been in 8 placements before us (do you have a clue now about how ignorant I was back then?); that she was coming to a new country and a new family; or that we prefaced this whole conversation by detailing our experience with adding older, internationally adopted kids (Tommy.) We talked about emotional, social and academic delays. Didn’t matter … she was 14 and 14 = 8th grade. We held our ground by giving them the option of moving her from 6th to 7th grade if they found her completely out of place in 6th grade. (They never approached the subject once she arrived!)


The school had administered standardized tests shortly before Cindy arrived. When I discussed testing her to assess her academic status, the answer was, “We administered the test already.” I had to say … “Well, do it again for her!” Duh!


A few weeks pass, and Cindy is rapidly escalating her behavior. She received one phone call a week from a boy she knew before arriving in our home. She refused to take messages when answering our phone, although her English was excellent and she was shown several times what was expected. It was a P/A thing, of course. I finally told her she lost phone privileges for a week, meaning she would miss one phone call.


One day the school counselor calls me to schedule a time to go over Cindy’s standardized test scores. I had been repeatedly abused by this school district already, so I was starting to become a bit paranoid. “Just you and me at this meeting?” I inquired. “Yes,” she assured me, “We’re just going to go over the test scores.”


I showed up at the appointed time. Although after this day I was never naïve again, at this point I still trusted people in general. I should have taken note of all the folks who were gathering for this meeting … but I didn’t. That is, not until I was ushered into a conference room where seven staff members were present—including the vice principal, school counselor and psychologist, teachers, and anyone else they could round up. Seven against one.


I sat down, and in short order they proceeded to ream me out. “Taking phone privileges away for a week is too much!” they declared. “One day would be better!” They went on and on and on. Eventually I was in tears. I left very upset, but not before one of them said, “We know what you are experiencing (therefore they were qualified to judge my parenting) because we have had foreign exchange students!” Can you imagine? I couldn't make this up ... it is too crazy! Sure, there are lots of correlations between hand-picked, top-of-the-class foreign exchange students and abused, neglected, rejected and abandoned orphans. Yeh, right.


I called my husband as soon as I left and he called the vice principal and asked what they had done. “We were afraid Nancy would leave with the wrong impression ...” was the response he received. Just what impression were they hoping to leave?


More stories about this kid and this school coming...


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