Originally Posted by Unregistered:
My twins (boy and girl) had been going to the same daycare since they were four months old. They are now almost five years old and had just started PreK at the same facility.
Last week my son had a bad day at school were he was written up five times. The first time was for biting in the morning (highly unusual for him) one of his best friends. Said he as playing a game with his friend, and it was an accident. The second time was for kicking a teacher (while she was trying to bring him to the director for 'time-out' for the aforementioned incident. My son said teacher was picking him up because he didn't want to leave the room for punishment and hurt his tummy, so he flailed around causing the kick). The next three time we're all end of day playground related, shoving other children. For these, the writeups were all 15 minutes apart. Said he was removed from group as solution, but obviously reintroduced shortly thereafter. Is it me, or were their diffusion and reintroduction techniques extremely flawed.
The director asked to speak to my wife and I the next day, where she told us that my son was being kicked out of the program. She cited ongoing disruptive behavior as the cause. But this behavior was never discussed with us as parents. These five writeups were highly unusual for my son. The only documented writeups were few and far between, at least 4-6 months since last 'playground' incident. The director said that not all instances were documented because they typically don't write a report of no 'marks are left'. Is this standard? Is this legal? Seems scary as a parent that you wouldn't document these things, especially if you are now substantiating an expulsion on undocumented incidents.
Director said that the 'afternoon' director had conversations with my wife verbally during pickup many times, which wife says never happened. Director mentioned feedback from parent teacher conferences, which was also never the case. We have the Mid and end of year progress report documents that mention nothing if the sort. I told her that if this behavior was really happening, that the school massively let us down as parents, never giving us a chance to address it with our son directly and taken measures to correct. Am I crazy to think that going from no notice of a problem (or few and far between) to expulsion was a crazy leap? My kids were DESTROYED that they were going to need to change schools instead of graduating PreK with all of the children that they had grown up with.
I asked to speak to the owner of the school who made the final decision. The director said he would contact me that night, but he never did. Next morning he called but not to discuss his decision, but to firm up our payment due for the month. I seemed to catch him off guard by asking him if he realized that he was speaking to the father of the child that he just kicked out of his school. He did not. He asked that I give him five minutes so that he could 'pull the file'. He never called back, I suspect out of cowardice.
I decided immediately not to send my children back to the school even though the 'discharge' was delayed until the end of the month. If my son was such a liability, why let him still come to school for two weeks? I suspect so that they could bill me for a whole month. They claim a courtesy.
Two weeks have passed, and I just received a letter from the owner stating that I owe him for the month. And that the 'enrollment guide' that I signed 4 years ago says that I must provide two weeks notice or be responsible for payment. And the fact that I removed my children ahead of the 2-week courtesy, plays no role- says I owe for entire month.
I can't articulate how furious I am with how this all cruelly went down, the impact to my children's emotional state, and now his letter for payment. Especially after blowing off my call, and never having the decency to talk to me before, throughout, or after this all happened.
I am strongly compelled to not pay a dime here. What would you do? I'm willing to go to court.
The funny thing here is that the school had just stopped taking credit cards a few weeks before this all went down. Where they would normally auto charge the card, the no longer could. So I would have paid them with a check this month, and all subsequent months, had this not all went down. Karma?
after he kicked me I would've called for pick up and termed on the spot. I wouldn't have charged though. Maybe because of your long relationship the daycare was being considerate and giving you time to find care for your twins... maybe not. On if you should pay or not it depends on your contract. I personally would not have felt comfortable sending my child back into care but would've given a two week notice and been done with it.