How far do you push it?

Okay, sorry it's been a bit since I last wrote. We've been up to our eyeballs in an incident at the school. As fate would have it, it's Arianna again. Why is it always her???

Players:

Mr. B - another 5th grade teacher who lives down the street
Ms. D - Arianna's 5th grade teacher
Mr. G - principal/superintendent
Mrs. T - vice principal
Mr. Z - a parent of one of the other kids at the table

Our little school here is lucky enough to have computers for every two students. This is the first year that we've had that many and the teachers are using them for many different applications throughout the day. Great. I have no problem with that. Arianna's teacher is young, single, and just learning about a few things. This is her 3rd year teaching, but 1st year in a traditional classroom. She taught Special Ed. for the previous two years.

Anyway, Tuesday, a little over a week ago Arianna told me that one of the kids near her did a search and pulled up an inappropriate image. From her description; naked lady, men pointed a gun at her, I could tell this was more pornographic than simply inappropriate. I knew, from the name of the website that this was NOT an oopsy-woopsy that just happens every now and again. This search was a diliberate infraction of the rules. Morever, this was the second day they had done the same search. So, after talking to Arianna and taking care of that end of things, I called Mr. B, who also happens to have some computer responsibilities at the school. He offered to talk to Arianna's teacher about it. I had Parent-Teacher Conference with Ms. D the next day and talked to her about it then too.

By the end of the week, the only thing that had been done about the matter was for the entire class to get a lecture about not doing searches for inappropriate material on the computers and that since someone had, the entire school may lose image searching capabilites. Friday afternoon I got an email that Ms. D had sent to Mr. G, Mrs. T, and the parents of the 4 students who were closest to the computer that displayed the image. It said that their child was involved in the incident, blah, blah, blah, and stated the 4 names of the students at that table. I was LIVID!!! Great. Now when I finally met Mr. Z and mentioned that Arianna was my child, the only association with her name would be that she was possibly responsible for doing that pornographic search. Moreover, after all the trouble we had getting Arianna into the right math class, the first non-parent initiated information about Arianna that Mr. G gets is that Arianna is one of the ones who is responsible for this problem. I could go on and on about how mad this made me. (I did talk to Ms. D again about how this email should have said, "Your child was involved..." and the email address should have been in the BCC: line so noone else knew who else was involved.) (BCC means "blind carbon copy"... noone else sees who got sent the email)

I found out after the weekend that Ms. D decided to move kids around in the class too, although she mentioned at PTC that she was planning to do that soon anyway, so I don't know that that was a consequence of the misdeed.

So here's my biff: The district policy is spelled out very specifically that should a student misuse the privileges of using the computer, that privilege will be revoked. It's not that I want to see the child burn or anything. I just want to see the district (we're a one-school school district, so school and district are used interchangably) follow their own policy.

Since administration was now involved (via Ms. D's email) and hoping to clear Arianna's name as well, we went in to talk to Mr. G. It took me getting pretty firm with him before I got a commitment from him that he would see to it that Arianna, who did the right thing, and the other girl, who did the wrong thing, will NOT have the same consequences for what happened. Sheesh! He had a hard time accepting that the whole class getting a talking to, and the whole class getting moved around, was NOT acceptable to me. And just how is that supposed to communicate to Arianna that she did the right thing??? Moreover, and more pertinently, how is that supposed to communicate to the girl who did the search that that behavior was dead wrong???

GRR!!!

After pointing out district policy to Mr. G, he says that needs to change so that he has leeway on how to deal with infractions of this type. My thoughts about the matter are, WHY??? Is there any bad that can come of this child's computer privilege's being revoked for a time. I'm not saying for life, or even all year here. I'm suggesting leeway based on the incident. One week's computer suspension, or heck, one DAY, is fairly harmless, but would communicate the severity of the infraction.

I know Mr. G is going to go to the school board and have them change the policy from "will be revoked" to "may be revoked". (He told us he was going to have it changed.) But, Mr. G is hired by the school board and the school board is elected to represent the parents. I am a parent and I don't want this wording changed. Moreover, I want the wording enforced.

So, do I take it to the school board? Or do I do what 95% of other people would do and let it go?

P.S. The only picture I can think to add that relates to my entry would be the one Arianna saw in school that day. Since I'd like to keep my blog G-rated... or at least PG, I'll skip the violence toward naked, provocatively posed women web image. You can thank me later. :)