Shattered Trust: Our Children Betrayed
In
this battle for our children and our parental rights, one of the
hardest things to accept is the wedge that has been driven between
families and schools. It is so difficult to see the pain of a child who
suddenly realizes that his teacher, his principal, and his school
counselor were not his friends and he could not trust them to stand up
for him when it counted. It is so hard to watch the confusion of a
child when the adults he has relied on for years betray him. Believe
me, it is a huge betrayal, being turned over to law enforcement because
you're sick.
I am disheartened today because one year after our
hard-fought amendment was passed, school districts are still turning in
children with excused absences. Today the superintendent of Fremont
Public Schools justified his staff's actions by saying that although the
law doesn't require them to turn in sick children after twenty days,
the law allows them to.
Why? Why would a school district
choose to throw a sick child with good grades from a responsible family
into the juvenile justice system? Criminalizing this child will not
make him well. What it will do is cause severe stress, fear and
emotional harm to the innocent child. What it will do is damage the
relationship between child and school irreparably.
I miss the days when the schools truly cared about the whole child instead of just caring about whether they are there.
Thanks to all who have bravely kept this blog and its activism going. while we cool our heels in home school (on the back of much frustration and the sort of thing Brenda described here) we boil slowly inside at the destructive nonsense that passes as public policy in schools. Not everyone thinks they can home school. I certainly didn't. Perhaps they should. But I still believe public education should be for everyone, even the ailing. What these policies are doing to families is unforgivable. BTW, Brad Ashford, author of the original anti-truancy campaign, is running for Mayor of Omaha.
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