Grandmother Goes Grand-Mama-Bear After Discovering How Her Grandson’s School Punished Him For Being Late

I'll admit, it's kind of sad that it's come to this -- threatening my children's schools with enrolling them in a neighboring district because, unfortunately, money talks, and I know that my kids, more than anything else, represent a number -- a dollar sign -- to the district.

We love my kids' teachers and I'm not bashing where my kids go to school.  The sad fact is this is how it is pretty much everywhere.  Twice a year, districts across the state have "student count day."  Some districts try to "lure" students to school on these two days with the chance to win prizes like electronics.  Why?  Because every kid is a dollar amount that the district either receives or misses out on, depending on whether they're in school on these particular days.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but, I don't believe any school has tried to lure students to school with electronics on any other random day for the purpose of, say, being in class for a really important lesson.  But I digress...

Back to my original point -- if something like this ever happened to my kid, their district would be losing money so fast heads would spin.

When her 6 year old grandson was late to school because of trouble with the family car, he was, consequently, punished for something that he had absolutely no control of.

I'm not particularly concerned about something like this happening to my kids, but, they've been late before, so it could.

I can't speak to this particular utterly disgusting situation in Oregon, but I can say that the fact that we are involved with our kids' schools makes a big difference, I believe.  We can and do voice our positions on issues on a regular-enough basis.  I like to think we've headed off some potentially-problematic issues simply by being engaged in what's happening at their schools.

This story gets filed in the fast-growing "Educators Behaving Badly" drawer --- which is not, as it may suggest, filled with stories of teachers secretly committing lewd or illegal acts, but rather, with teachers and administrators doing insanely stupid things, supposedly with good intent and often right in front of our eyes.

But the real reason I wanted to share this story with you is because a GoFundMe page has been set up to help the family purchase a new vehicle, and I think if you're going to donate to a random cause online, this one is as good as any.

There's no undoing the damage that the school has caused this child (and who knows how many others), but we just bought new tires for our car, and let me tell you -- it has made quite a difference in getting the kids to school on time, not having to stop and air up a tire that has gone flat overnight.

They say 'it takes a village,' so let's pool our resources and make sure he doesn't have to worry about being late again.