Ohhh, Game ON!

I am just livid. Patrick's teacher called me, but she's not the one I am angry with. After discussing the fact that Patrick is already caught up from an entire week's worth of absences, she was calling me to warn me about another teacher. There is this "resource" teacher at the school, who is in charge of way to much in my mind. She is the one who assesses children for giftedness, or LDs. She edits the school newsletter (which never congratulates children for their sport successes under the school name), she reads the announcements. Anyway, she decided that Patrick should continue to be in a reading group with her, despite the fact that he is doing really well in reading now. So after he has been sick so often, and his teacher expressed her concerns about how much classtime he has missed, I questioned the need for him to be in the reading group, since they miss classtime for that. The teacher said she would bring it up with Ms. Resource Teacher, who in turn said that Patrick needs to be in it but it is ultimately my decision. I said, fine, let's let him do it, but if I find that he is missing too much, I will ask that he doesn't go with her anymore. Well I'm guessing she didn't like that. Last week when he was sick (as in sick with asthma and a high fever), Ms. Resource Teacher noticed and asked Miss New Teacher how much school he has missed already this year. She told her 24 days so Ms. Resource Teacher said, well then you need to bring him up to "team". "Team" is when the teachers, the principal and Ms. Resource Teacher sit and discuss individual students and their progress or their struggles. She told Miss New Teacher that Patrick would probably be recommended for a pediatric evaluation. I was floored and said, that it absolutely unnecessary. I said, you realize that he has asthma, and a kidney condition which have both required extensive testing. I also told her that last fall when he had the flu 3 times in a row that the doctor and I were concerned and had him go for bloodtests to rule out frigging leukemia. She is going to bring this up. I don't really have anything to fear if he has an assessment, it is basically just a checkup, but it infuriates me that Ms. Resource Teacher is taking it to this point, just to piss me off because I questioned the necessity of her group. She claims that the concern is that he is missing too much french instruction time that is required for French Immersion. She said that he has missed 25% of it. So, I did my homework and found out that is bogus, there is no such requirement, and if they want to get technical, their program doesn't even meet the minimum percentage of daily french instruction to be considered and get funding as french immersion. Does she really want to go there with me? LOL Based on the school year, he has actually missed 14% of his french instruction time. While that is a lot, my point is that he was SICK. You know, fever, headache, lethargy, cough, wheezing and oh yeah, ASTHMA ATTACKS.

I called another mom who is an executive on Parent council and she was furious too. She has an older child at the school, so she knows full well what Ms. Resource Teacher is like and she HATES her. She said to go take her on. ;-)

I understand that this process would be good for some child who was missing a lot of school, because he or she wasn't getting adequate medical treatment, or if they had concerns that there may be signs of child abuse that is causing the absences. But neither of those is the case. He isn't missing days because of untreated illnesses, nor is it because of questionable injuries. He has missed it because he has had 5 viruses since September, not to mention the relapses that he had because after pressure from the teacher, we sent him back too early.

Okay, I can breathe now...