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.