The Prof Is In

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need advice/ help - school incident

From: Michelle
Date: 18 Oct 2009
Time: 13:04:45 -0500
Remote Name: 76.200.200.162

Comments

Hi, I need some opinion and advice. My family and I are very upset. Please help. My son is 7 and has stuttered since age 2. I was in his school buying lunch tickets on Friday morning (16th). The principal was away, so our secretary made the morning announcements. It caught my attention since she started in a very negative way. "Its Friday morning and it has been a long, long, long,long week" She continued as I was thinking how negative she sounded. Her speech must have bounced because then (and I cannot recall the exact words)she said something like - "OH and now I'm stuttering!" She said this on the announcements to the entire school. We are trying to protect our son from negative comments. We feel she taught the entire school a lesson on labeling the behavior and to have a negative attitude about it. We know stutter is not a bad word, but I feel that she put a negative connotation into it. We are very upset. I think as a school employee, what she said was very inappropriate. Does anyone agree or disagree with me? I'd really like to know if this is no big deal, because the story continues. I called the principal. He didn't seem to find it odd. His first comment was "well did she?". I tried to explain by saying if she had a moment of confusion and said "oh, now I'm retarded" it would be completely unacceptable. He then told me I was blowing this out of proportion. Was I? I feel it was a very good example. He said he would talk to her and get back to us. My husband went to the school, a bit heated, but he didn't yell, he didn't swear or threaten. He said about the same example and asked why she would say something like that. She said it was just a joke. Later the principal called and said he talked to her and she was very apologetic. We thought, Ok, people are going to make mistakes, case closed. Case was not closed. At about 3:30 that day the head of human services for the district calls and leaves a very obviously not friendly message. She needs to see my husband in her office by 4:00 in her office to meet with her and the district police officer concerning his behaviour! If she doesn't hear from him by 4:00 on Monday, the meeting will take place at the police station instead! I honestly can't believe this is happening. I feel it is so obvious that she should bend over apologizing and yet were in trouble because she felt my husband "berated" her. Some of our friends think the district is trying to cover themselves by finding fault with us. We have the meeting set for Monday at 10:00am. But after talking it over this weekend, we have emailed the district superintendent and asked that we let the issue be resolved now. If he emails back clearly backing the secretary, we may ask that the meeting be postponed until we seek legal advice. I'm not sure I'm up for a fight. All we really want is for the secretary and the principal to think about it for a few minutes and apologize. This is so strange and upsetting. Any feed back would help. We feel what she did was so hurtful and yet, we are the bad guys for speaking up. Am I not seeing this clearly? Help in Wisconsin. by the way, our school principal is set to receive an award in Washington DC soon because our school is one ofonly 5 "blue ribbon schools" in the state.


Last changed: 10/23/09