Last night I filled out ALL the beginning of the year paperwork the school needs for my kids, almost two hours worth.  Among the required paperwork was the district policies that I had to read to see if there were any changes and I came across something that pissed me off.

There was a section on attendance, naturally.  Can you believe they do not accept illness as an excused absence.  Nor do they accept a doctor’s note as an excused absence the way they use to.  Basically, according to our school district, there is NO excuse for a child to miss school.

Excuse me? 

Yeah, even sick kids aren’t excused from school   Oh that explains a lot.

The packet suggested, and I shit you not, that when our kids are sick to send them to school for a few hours so the school can still get funds for the children. 

Can you believe that shit?

My kids have never spent a day in any sort of day care or pre-k facility.  While Mister and I worked they were with my grandma, next door to us.  She only watched our girls and my niece.  Because of our babysitting arrangement my girls were hardly ever sick.  They weren’t around a bunch of kids so when they entered kindergarten almost immediately they began coming down with colds, what seemed like monthly!  At first I thought it was just Drama Queen but when The Snitch started school, last year, I saw the same thing happened. 

That’s when I put two and two together. 

When Drama Queen was almost finished with kindergarten Mister and I received a threatening notice from the district that if she missed one more day of school we would be brought up in front of the district school board for review.  Scared we sent her to school, sick or not, until the end of the year.  Now the same thing has happened with The Snitch.

This past January The Snitch got real sick one weekend.  I kept her home Monday and Tuesday but sent her back on Wednesday, even though she still wasn’t feeling well, poor thing.  She was coughing and miserable.  About twenty-five minutes into my work day I wasn’t surprised when the nurse called me to pick her up.  

There I go taking a sick day and leaving work less than an hour in.

I took her to the doctor to find out my baby girl had walking pneumonia!  They gave her an in office breathing treatment in addition to a few antibiotics and an asthma medication for her breathing.  I got a note to keep her out the remainder of the week.  Immediately I took the note to school, collected her homework and thought all was well.

It wasn’t. 

At the end of the year I got her attendance info and they had her marked as unexcused even with a doctor’s note. And now Mister and I have been summoned to the school, next month, to meet with a representative from the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office! 

I’m so pissed.

When I went to one of The Snitch’s award ceremonies I was surprised that they gave perfect attendance awards to kindergartners!  I thought to myself What Kindergartners can make perfect attendance?  Now I know, the ones who’s parents send them to school sick and end up getting my kids sick!

I know school budgets have been cut.  I know this.  I know its important for our kids to go to school.  I know this.  But how much does a sick five year old learn in the thirty minutes they are there when they’re coughing and feverish?  Not much.   We’re not like the neighborhood welfare mothers who have kids to keep a steady state pay check coming into their homes.  (And trust me, I’m not dogging mother’s on welfare, its just that I know one of these who is currently pregnant with her SIXTH child who doesn’t work and is rapping the state for money!)  WE WORK and because we work we only get so much time off with pay.  Eventually my employer will get sick of me taking off thirty minutes after arriving so I can pick my child up when I dropped her off at school KNOWING she was sick.  My children’s health has to come before any fucken state funds!

My dad tells me Fuck them your kids are sick and its your first priority to do what is best for them so you keep them home.  So here I am, now, armed with attitude and ready to take on the fucken Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office!

Rant over.