This school year I have noticed an usually high level of hostility from the school office workers, including school prinicpals and the like. The subtext of every single conversation is basically “shut the fuck up and go away”. Conversations are very short, simmering with some sort of impatient rage and very VERY unhelpful.
For instance, this year my youngest wore her blue skinny jeans to school. Now they weren’t denim blue, but kind of a pastel powder blue. Please note that the dress code only specified BLUE. No shade caveats. Just blue.
I get a phone call from a crying, distraught 13 year old that she needs another pair of pants because her jeans are not dress code. I ask why and she said they were the wrong color blue.
Excuse me? The dress code page I PRINTED OUT 30 days before school started has no reference to SHADE of blue. It says all pants must be blue, khaki, grey or black. I ask to speak to the office worker bee(which turns out to be a very hostile hispanic woman) and she tells me that all jeans must be DENIM BLUE. Uh, that isn’t on the dress code you have POSTED on the school website.
She informs me in the iciest tones that THEY had a school MEETING and INFORMED the students that blue means denim blue. Well happy days. Why the HELL didn’t you tell ME, yanno the one that PURCHASES school clothes? And how about you refunding the $60 bucks those jeans cost because I purchased them based on the FRICKEN POSTED DRESS CODE.
Oh, and when said daughter gets home, she tells me they had to round up 3 teachers to have a quorum to determine if the jeans were the wrong color.
Does anyone see a problem with this? How about the staff err in favor of the CHILD? Since when does school equal a police state? And how does this particular action “promote self esteem and a positive learning environment”? You just criminalized my daughter on the COLOR OF HER JEANS?
How fucked up is that?