Talk about “no excuses”!
Blogger and retired teacher Norm Scott broke the story that Girls Prep Charter School in New York City posted a warning to parents about the dire consequences of arriving late to pick up their children. If the parent did not arrive by 3:45, the child would be taken to the local police precinct. Repeated failure to pick up on time would lead to a report to the city’s Administration for Children’s Services.
Referral to ACS might trigger an investigation of the parent and family. Chalkbeat picked up Scott’s report, based on an anonymous tip. ““You’re almost criminalizing parents. You’re calling them neglectful,” said Ocynthia Williams, an advocate with the Coalition for Educational Justice. “The bottom line is it’s a terrible policy for parent engagement at that school.”
Officials told Chalkbeat’s Geoffrey Decker that it was probably an idle threat. Girls Prep earlier came under criticism for offering $100 for referring students who remained enrolled at least three months.
Norm Scott ran another exposé of the same charter, posting a letter from a disgruntled parent, who claimed that the school was a “boot camp” that was training children in robotic behavior.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It sounds like parents are behaving just like many public school parents thinking the school can provide free child care. What is an employee to do when a student or students are not picked up consistently after say 6:00 p.m.?
If school lets out hours earlier, that is an issue for child services. However, if the school has just let out, or has let out only minutes before, bringing children to a precinct is extreme.
Yes, it’s extreme and punitive, and also very revealing of the attitudes that lurk just behind the fatuous rhetoric of the so-called reformers.
These reprehensible people are re-defining what the “school-to-prison pipeline” means, and in the process confirming every stereotype of so-called reformers as rigid and heartless.
I guess this is what Obama, Duncan and rest of the edu-frauds mean when they talk about charters as “laboratories of innovation,” innovating us straight back to the 19th century.
There is a huge difference in 15 minutes late and 2 hours late without a phone call saying the parent has an emergency. And taking a child to the police station gives a, possibly already distressed girl, a very negative impression of law enforcement. Children should not be taught to view the police as the enemy and poor children often develop that attitude when they witness police engaging in rough or abusive behavior in their communities—–i.e. SWAT rumbling down their street, setting off flash grenades that blow out windows, and handcuffing their neighbors or brothers but rarely finding any drugs.
Or, breaking hand/wrist bone of 17-year-old student, as off-duty Newark policeman (not in uniform who did not identify himself) did Sept 10. The students’ protest against Cami Anderson’s One Newark went peacefully all day till 6:30 until that officer acted. Mayor Baraka asked police to respect the students’ right to dissent. There were at least 3 uniformed police officers in video who acceded to his action. The video recorded by a bystander, shown on Newark Students Union Facebook page, was distressing to watch.
I like the idea of a staff member getting paid to stay (although principals here are already making big bucks not to mention the test bonuses they make on the back of their teachers). But, just how long is this person supposed to wait is the question? If school ends at 3, then waiting an extra hour or so is not so bad, as long as other personnel are also in the school. However, when after school ends at 6, it might not be a good idea to be left alone in any building. Then it becomes a matter of safety and security.
Parents have to make arrangements when they are late–a neighbor, a relative, or with another classmate’s family. But they must notify the school as well because we should not turn over a child to anyone who’s not listed on the forms. Our emergency contact information asks for more than one phone number and more than just the parents numbers. Schools make every attempt to call all those numbers. No one more than a school official wants the child picked up rather than having to take them to the local precinct.
Again, this practice of leaving children with the police is not done unless a pattern of behavior on the part of the parent exists or, after many hours, when no one has come to claim the child. Then bells and whistles should go off because I for one would be concerned that something horrible happened and would contact the police.
Yes, changemaker, I’ll feed you for the moment. Toss in a dig at the public school parents, those dirtbags. Throw it back to all those bad public school parents who act like school is daycare for the kids they neglect. Good for you
That’s right: Drill, drill, drill. Make those kids listen. NO EXCUSES.
It works with my household appliances.
Flick a switch, appliance on or off as I will.
Atlanta Public Schools had a somewhat similar policy for special needs students where, if there was no one to meet the bus, the child was taken to the Children’s Shelter. The parent had to meet with a social worker before she could take her child home. Day care centers charge extra if a parent is late. So this kind of policy is not unusual.
However the boot camp attitude of the program should result in the loss of the charter as it demeans the students and may create little robots who vote Republican instead of thinking for themselves. Plus it makes the common assumption that what poor children need is a lot of structure and rules, that they are not smart enough to make decisions or responsible enough to handle any kind of personal freedom. If you are poor, you are automatically “bad”, in other words. I have seen this attitude in public inner city schools and even in some high functioning suburban schools—-that students have to be “beaten into submission”, if not physically, at least emotionally. My experience is that the administration also “beats” the teachers. Such situations are part of the “school to prison pipeline” many schools become, or are presumed to be. Girls who go to this school will be well prepared for prison or a life of abuse with a domineering husband.
Speaking of accountability, I think this is an amazing thing to say:
“I have been hard on Henderson. She has made mistakes. She failed to seriously investigate test tampering by school administrators. She has embraced a fantasyland plan to raise proficiency rates by 40 percentage points in the city’s worst-performing schools by 2017. But I understand the forces that made better choices very difficult. Going after the cheaters, for instance, would have created a disruptive legal and political mess.”
They’re aware that there are people in Atlanta who are currently being prosecuted for that, right?
If he truly believes someone in DC “didn’t go after the cheaters” because it would be “disruptive” why doesn’t that excuse apply to any school district anywhere?
I don’t know what happened in DC with the scores, but I do know what happened to the teachers in Atlanta. They got hammered, complete with ridiculously over-the-top perp walk. Why is one city different than the other?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/in-dc-mayors-race-vote-for-candidate-who-supports-schools-chief-kaya-henderson/2014/09/21/155fa5f8-3d2e-11e4-b03f-de718edeb92f_story.html
In some public school districts in Arizona, truant students and their parents are sent to juvenile court and the student can be arrested by the school resource officer.
If you are late or have an unexcused absence in as little as four times, they can and will refer the student and parents to court.
With funding relying on Average Daily Membership, the district schools make every threat they can to keep butts in the seats.
That’s different. Truancy is not showing up to school. This has to do with parents not arriving on time to get their students after school.
There seem to be 2 issues here……Drill and kill charters and lateness. I will focus on lateness because this is a huge problem with public schools as well.
I believe NYC schools have a similar policy. There is a cutoff time before the child is escorted to the local police. Just how long should the child and staff sit in the office waiting….waiting….? They have lives too.
This is also an arrival problem too. There are parents who constantly arrive to school late, sometimes after 1st period (elementary level). This makes it hard for clusters who teach science, computers, etc. during 1st period to give a passing grade and their employment hinges on good test scores.
Then there are the parents who leave them at the door hours before school starts–alone!! Lateness before and after school is a problem. Letters don’t seem to have any effect. This is neglect.
What about parents who don’t return phone calls or even bother to contract the school? Many after-school programs end at 6pm and some children are still waiting for their parents to pick them up! Should the school provide breakfast, lunch and dinner? I bet the first time picking a child up at the local station is all most parents need to get the message that school and staff are not to be disrespected, and they have an obligation to their child.
So what are the alternatives if a parent is 45 minutes or more late picking up their child?
Schoolgal, whatever the alternative might be, taking the child to the police and calling ACS is not it.
First of all Michael, the ACS is NOT called unless there is a pattern. Secondly, what is your alternative because that was the question. If you think the staff is responsible to stay as long as it takes, then just say it. In fact, you should volunteer.
Agreed, schoolgal. As a teacher who has missed my own personal after-school appointments because of some parents’ chronic delays with picking up their children, I do not take well to a cavalier attitude about the value of my time especially after I’ve put in an extra hour of instruction at the end of a long six hour day of performing arts (there IS no “sit at your desks quietly and read/write or have recess” downtime for music teachers) for peanuts in extra pay. I am exhausted and clearly have a personal life with responsibilities to my family after the activity is over, yet this seems lost on some parents since every year, a new parent or three decide to “space out” when they should be picking up their children. How could you not know when the pick up time is when it’s written on every document sent home with your child including emails and the registration contract that you have signed? The lying, blaming traffic, making excuses–all of these are ridiculous. They must think school personnel are morons.
The last thing I need to hear is excuse after excuse about why a parent just can’t seem to get to the school on time at the conclusion of the activity. Look…once is understandable, but more than once, and you’ve got an issue you need to resolve. Call if you are going to be late. Find another person as a back-up for car-pooling. But know that I am not a babysitter, especially a free one.
Putting the child in police custody is harsh, and I don’t think I would ever do it, but my time as a professional needs to be respected. After enduring so many excuses from parents who are chronicly late, my principal and I have devised a policy where excessive tardiness in pick-up after activities will result in the child being removed from said activity. I feel for the kids, but frankly, the lesson learned is “don’t take advantage of people.” I have also made it clear that my principal needs to be available to take responsibility for the child if the parent has not yet arrived after the activity has ended. That’s why he gets paid the big bucks.
Unless a person has endured the 10, 15, 20+ minute wait AFTER the students should be gone, they have no clue about this issue.
Charter schools in my area (Michigan) do this a lot. They require parents to sign agreements regarding their responsibilities which I have no problem with but traditional public schools could never do that.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Who is drinking the corporate Charter Kool-Aid?
Infamous New York Charter threatens to send kids to jail and call Children’s Services if kids not picked up by parents by 3:45 PM. The public schools where I taught for thirty years still had teachers, staff and sports programs going until as late as 10:00 PM and starting before 7:00 AM. I think only ignorant fools believe corporate Charters are better than public schools, because they swallowed the corporate propaganda without question.
The child is not “sent to jail”. Let’s not be over dramatic. It’s just like if a child is lost.
The problem with this school is the tone of the letter. And I DO have an issue with that. Had the letter simply stated the regulation for young children who are not picked up by a certain hour without the threat, we would not have a story here. Parents need to be made aware of what the policies are. Unfortunately, this principal went a bit too far in the wording. Again, this is not just a “charter” policy, but my own elementary school principal had to do this a few times.
A few times in what you expect and does happen. Really, most children being sent to the police department alone is scary and traumatic. It puts a rift between the child and parent, as the child will begin to second guess there own parents good intentions., especially if they see their parent being reprimanded by an authority figure.
How many parents will simply start to tell there child. Hey if I am not here 10 minutes after the bell rings sneak away and meet me at the store around the corner. Hang out and when I get their I will get their. How safe is that?
Who is drinking the corporate Charter Kool-Aid?
Infamous New York Charter threatens to send kids to jail and call Children’s Services if kids not picked up by parents by 3:45 PM.
The public schools where I taught for thirty years in California still had teachers, staff and sports programs going until as late as 10:00 PM and starting before 7:00 AM. I think only ignorant fools believe corporate Charters are better than public schools, because they swallowed the corporate propaganda without question.
You said it!
I am a former charter school fool who woke up.
I think there are parents who have chronic problems with tardiness with no good reason. Perhaps a small “fine” similar to a library fine for repeat offenders would incentivize promptness. (The money could be added to PTA funds). The child is also embarassed when he/she is left behind and frankly, the school is not a babysitter.
At the high school where I taught for the last sixteen years of the thirty I was a classroom teacher, the library was open until 5:00 PM and there were usually some teachers on campus working late in addition to coaches with their sport teams practicing.
A child waiting late could have gone to the library or sat in the bleachers and watched the teams practice. But then that is a full service public school. The Charters are not full service, because siphoning off money for profits and higher management costs makes sure that doesn’t happen.
In addition, almost every day, there were sport competitions, with fans watching in the bleachers, and teachers were required to sign up for these games to supervise the crowd. Some of these games ran way longer than 5:00 PM when the library closed. Competitions usually started at 5:00 followed by the varsity competitions later in the evening.
For seven years, I was the journalism teacher and I worked late almost every day as the students produced the monthly newspaper. Other students, who were friends of the student newspaper staff—knowing this—would show up and take an empty desk and work on homework. The same thing happened in the room where the annual yearbook was produced.
I am sure that all of this is threatened by the corporate driven fake education reform movement because most of these programs are not academic, are difficult to test and would cut into profits.
The sacrifices many teachers made to keep these programs going are many.
I am sure the school of your day as was mine is far different from the school of today. Any child not actively involved in so many of the activities you mentioned would be asked not to loiter on the school grounds. Also I don’t think this situation referred to middle and high school aged children many of who can make their own way home. I think this article referred to elementary aged children who require continuous adult supervision.
Lloyd, Your description highlights an essential problem of “reformers”–they don’t trust the professionalism and basic goodness of the majority of teachers. It would be like slamming all physicians because a few plastic surgeons do many procedures just for the money or–Chiara can give us the suitable comparison for attorneys.
I agree, but how can we expect the fake education reformers to trust teachers when, for sure, they don’t trust each other? After all, there is no honor among thieves.
These parents need to learn grit too and must be punished if they are late picking up their children! Punish the students, punish the teachers, punish the parents.. Punish all of them because they must have grit! Yes, and Nazi Germany told the people deemed undesirable that work made them free. Disgusting policies.
FYI. Sara Robinsons school. She makes $300,000 as a recruiter
Sent from my iPhone
That is nothing! US run Turkish charter schools, the largest chain or differing charters, give huge bonuses to their teachers, who then turn around and give back 30 to 40% donation to their Muslim/ Gulenist movement back in Turkey. Currently, it’s reported that they are trying to over the Turkish government politically. A 3:1 ration Turkish : US dollar imbalance is letting Gulenist divert US educational funds to opening many more practicing Muslim charter schools world wide. This has been going on since 2002 when they first US charter schools. Don’t expect anything to happen though, US politician love to accept campaign donations from charter schools. They continue to push the lie that regular public schools are bad. Its BS… impoverished children continue to suffer and the entire public school system is being brought down.
$300,000 LOL
Meanwhile at the local public school…principal chats with student while waiting, secretaries offer a comfy chair to start homework, office staff calm parent telling them not to rush and focus on driving, teacher walks by and offers to take student to room to do some teacher helper jobs. Parents/guardians arrive grateful, child goes home with a lesson in compassion.
Where is the lesson in compassion for the over-worked teacher who, after a long day of performing with her 150 students in music classes during the regular school day, just used up the last ounce of energy she had on the extra after-school rehearsal that ended fifteen minutes ago and is sitting idly with a child in the office waiting for an absent parent to get a clue that his or her child is finished with the activity, no matter how many times the “end time” has been advertised to said parent? If you can find this lesson of compassion for the teacher that the parent is teaching the child, please point it out to me, because I don’t see it.
Yes, your little scenario is all that’s right with the world, of course, providing school personnel are still on the clock. Once they are off-duty, parents need to understand that they are taking advantage. Once is understandable. More than that, the parent is teaching the child how school personnel are not to be respected. Sorry, I have been burned far too many times by the well-meaning parent who “lost track of time, etc.” If I could charge them for additional time, I would be rich, but I guarantee, they wouldn’t do it again.
Yes, if the school has after-school activities, the child will stay in the office. However, once 6 pm rolls around, people are tired and may have appointments of their own. And yes, the student will no longer be able to attend after school activities if this situation happens more than once. Btw, it’s the responsibility of the principal, not teachers to supervise the child.
I understand you. The point is as school grows this parental behavior is expected especially since many parents who send their children to charter schools are economically disadvantage themselves or are on the brink. Therefore it is up to administration to help parents meet their needs. Yes, you are right, teachers should be paid for their extra time. Charters don’t care about parent or children. Its false advertisement. They really don’t care about staff either. There are plenty of certified out of work teachers. Charters prefer to hire the uncertified alternative program first year teacher or even the home school parent who child has returned to high school over experienced staff. They do hope that people they do hire do have low enough self-esteem to stay a few years though.
As teachers were saying earlier this year, “Evaluate that!”
This was reply to Speducator
SpEd Is cool and terribly underfunded and not profitable to charter schools. So put together a plan, ( forget about teacher training in this matter at a charter) RTI the need and graph the progress, as only “enough” documentation counts. Other wise… sh** up and put up with it ( in non union institutions and states), and hope the parents get so frustrated with excuses that they leave and go somewhere else, like another charter school. LOL- the system is sick.
Sing it:
No body wants to identify them… Especially Charter Schools. No body want to service them… Especially Charters.
No one wants to buy extra teacher additions for them… all schools.
No body want to buy special curriculum or manipulatives for them… Especially Charters.
No administration want them attending their schools… Especially Charters.
LOL- too much coffee this morning.
Thank you for teaching … you are appreciated.
EVERY charter that I’ve been aware of makes the claim that their teachers work 10 and 12 hour days, and Saturdays if not alternate Saturdays. Charter school getting out at 3:45, isn’t that unheard of? I guess there is no after school program and the teachers work normal hours? Arrest the parents, shame on them. (Sarcasm y’all.)
Charters offer nothing but ,” lip service,” only care about profits they are making off your kids. The teachers are over worked with very little time for extra duty. So how dare parents be late… It will cost the school money if there is a legitimate documentable need for overtime personal. This probably is an idol threat, however I wouldn’t be surprised if that is the local trend in this area, but it usually several hours at a regular public school. Charters like to pretend they are private schools and forget they are tax payer funded and should be held accountable and have more ethical policies. They discriminate against disabled students too. Charters can’t make money off SpEd kids as well. Special Education is seriously under funded. That means these kids and especially the low incident SpEd student like moderate to severe autism is denied school choice.. A Civil Rights Violation.
Onward, at a regular public school a student left after duty personal has left would fall to an assigned staff member who would be able to collect extra duty pay or traded with some other compensation, such as accumulated overtime equal a leave early pass. Otherwise the after care usually falls to administrators until parents can be reached. Police contacted as a last resort. If this is a habitual problem the regular public school will usually try to find a parent volunteer or another teacher to help out regularly, especially if the parent is having a hard time paying for care. School district service coordinators are often called in to help find parents resources. I wish people would wake up and see that the vast majority of public schools are really much better then charters ever will be.