More Howling

          Since I appear to be on a bitchy roll here, I want to discuss something that has been making me effing crazy ever since Feisty Pants started regular (irregular?)  school.  I mean that as opposed to pre-school.  We did not have this problem there.  It has to do with society in general and the bus company in particular.   STOP FRIGGING TREATING MY CHILD'S EDUCATION AS IF IT WERE DAYCARE.    Frigging seriously, just stop it.   My child's education is different in a thousand ways- big and small, but it still is her education and I take it seriously. 

           What's going on, you see, is that the bus company plays fast and loose with Feisty Pants' pick up time to leave school.   They keep picking her up BEFORE her day is actually over.  And not just by a few minutes, either.  More like half an hour.   And that is pissing me off to no end.   They do for two reasons.  One, they are suffering from institutional thinking.  They probably think they are efficient and getting kids like mine home safely and quickly without interfering with the schedule of the typical kids.  Two, they also feel its okay to mess with my kid's education because it really doesn't matter, poor thing is probably tired.  After all, she is disabled.

             This is the part where I officially grow fangs and howl at the moon.  I don't give a rat's fanny how you want to do your job.  You do not have the right to short change any child's education so you can be done a little quicker or more smoothly.   This is their effing education.  You serve these children and get paid for it.  YOU compromise, not them.   And, secondly, even more importantly, HOW DARE YOU assume my child can just miss almost half a day a week because you damn well feel like it?  That's how much it amounts to.  Thirty minutes a day times five days a week.  That's 2 and 1/2 hours  week.  Four weeks a month.  Ten months a year.  I'm not even counting the summer session. (FP goes year round to school. But the summer session is much more laid back.  So I'll be generous.) That's about 100 hours of  school she is missing because you think her education doesn't matter.  At six hours per day that's about SIXTEEN AND ONE HALF DAYS A YEAR that you are stealing from her education.   You don't have that right.  You especially don't the right to steal that from a disabled child.

                I have bitched and bitched.  Everyone very politely blows smoke up my butt but nothing is changing.  So now, I am done howling.  Now you see my fangs. The bus company (mistakenly) thinks it is protected by its point of service contract against any legal repercussions. Although, I would argue that by violating my daughter's constitutional right to an education they have unclean hands and therefore should NOT be protected by any contract, especially one I did not ever sign.  But whether it's the bus company or my local district who would pay is irrelevant.  If this does not stop., I am going to ask that you give my child back the hundred hours a year (times every year she has been in your school district) by simply paying for a private tutor to come to my house and teach her.  There is a LOT of precedent lately for courts ordering this kind of reparation. I want my daughter to have a complete independent life where she takes care of herself, and has a job, and pays taxes, and annoys her fellow citizens by being bitchy and outspoken.  Education is the key and she has a legal right to it.   Which do you think will be cheaper for you, dear school administrators, by making your bus company do the right thing or by my making the bus company and you do the right thing in court?