Dear School Board – About That Letter

Dec 15, 2013 by winjaw

Ever have one of those days when you walk into your home and you know something isn’t right with the cosmos?

Happened to me the other day. The Middle SON of Thunder walks by, without even a hello. And I swore there was this massive dark cloud of doom over his head. The Little Black Dress just looks at me and throws up her hands.

As near as I can tell, the LBD has to report to some judge and may end up in jail. Middle SON will be headed for a mandatory psychiatric evaluation. And he, the SON, that is, keeps muttering, “I don’t even know what ‘abeyance’ means.”

This is not good. More so when The Dress asks what color are the jail jumpsuits. I tell her orange, but I’m getting ahead of myself here.

So I do a little more digging. Turns out, Middle SON was given a very official-looking letter from school officials. He read it on the bus.

Psychiatrists and other mental health experts would classify what happened to Middle SON after said reading as a “freak out.”

Let’s just pull a few sentences from the very official letter to illustrate why Middle had that “freak out.”

“Shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction therefore, shall be subject to a fine not less than $25 and not greater than $100, imprisonment not to exceed 30 days, community service, or any combination of such penalties …” (For the record, the imprisonment part was boldfaced in the letter. Just so you don’t think I’m exaggerating.)

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The section regarding Middle SON said: “… may be adjudicated unruly and either placed on probation, required to undergo a psychiatric or other mental health evaluation, placed on supervised or unsupervised abeyance, committed to the Department of Juvenile Justice, or ordered to do community service. As a general rule, the court is not permitted to detain such a child in restrictive custody.”

Yeah. Hence the freak out. But I tried to calm him by pointing out that “general rule,” and the court not being able to put him in jail … probably.

“THEY’RE SENDING ME TO JUVI?” he yells. Okay, I’m ornery, I’m having too much fun at my son’s expense.

The cause of all this freak out was the official “You Have Too Many Unexcused Absences” letter. What happened was Middle SON got sick right before Thanksgiving break. Went to the doctor, he had whatever was going around, ended up missing that whole week. The doctor sent a note, but only for two days, thus the unexcused letter.

So The Dress, aka Mother Bear, writes what I considered a very nice note on the letter. Basically, it explained the situation and she went on to suggest it might be a wee bit inappropriate to give such a letter to a very impressionable young man.

Middle SON dutifully carried the Scarlet letter back to school the next day. Not long after, a very nice lady from the school called and, basically, apologized. She agreed it probably was best not to give kids these types of letters to read. At least not until explaining that “general rule” about probably not going to juvenile hall.

So we all agreed it probably would be best to seal these types of letters with wax and the principal’s signet ring — just to ensure no more freak outs.