POWER TRIP

Rage coursed through my veins as I drove over to the middle school where I demanded an answer as to their absurd decision.

‘All last year I asked for your help and you did nothing!’ I yelled. I was very angry and did not care who heard me. I couldn’t remember the last time I was so outraged.

That decision was a result of a hearing last Friday where one of the assistant principals stated it was merely a scare tactic. Scaring my son into submission and obedience. This assistant principal was new to the school this year, with an apparent chip on his shoulder and was off on a power trip. This final year of middle school was turning out to be even worse than last year.

I demanded to talk to the principal. But, as usual, there was a meeting to where he was unavailable. The principal’s secretary came out into the lobby and explained that he really was in a meeting and then took me into a conference room to discuss things further and to schedule an appeal hearing for Wednesday morning.

Another teacher who helps out my son came to the room and let me know she just heard of the decision. She was apologetic about the fact that this was the result of a bully having taken revenge on my son. After my ranting, I went out to the front office and saw my son emerge from one of the offices in the back. He was very unhappy and quite confused. He had to spend yet another day in ISS until the school made their decision to send him away to the correctional school for 60 school days.

This was after the following plea letter this morning. One I wrote before the sun made its appearance as this entire situation was very troubling. The letter was as follows:

Dear FPMS staff,

Sage and I spent the weekend discussing this latest incident of your consideration to send him to LEO for 60 days. As we both see this, it is unjustified given the circumstances.

All last year, we have tried to get the school’s assistance when Sage was being bullied and harassed. The time he was thrown to the ground by a group of sixth graders who ended up damaging his new iPhone. Nothing was done about that. Sage’s phone is still damaged.

Then there were the many instances where his backpack was trampled upon and thrown. The school did nothing about that. Then the times he was harassed and bullied by another sixth grader, that curly haired blond boy. Nothing was done about that.

Last year, Sage was called ‘a stupid white boy’. This year, a student called him ‘a stupid Nazi’ and whacked him really hard with a metal water bottle to where he had a headache, and he stole his AirPods. A group of boys called him ‘gay’ (something I witnessed two weeks ago when picking up Sage from school), and the social studies teacher called him ‘an idiot’ in addition to constantly yelling at him and everyone else. As far as Sage sees, the boy who hit him did not get sent to LEO for any amount of time, and certainly not 60 days as you are proposing for Sage.

In the meantime, you want Sage to trust you and come to you when he needs assistance. But after all he sees, he trusts the school even less. Instead of creating an encouraging learning environment, you want to send him somewhere which should be reserved for the worst students. Definitely not a place for someone as smart as you keep telling him he is. Mixed signals, as he sees.

In our current American society, it has come to the point where you cannot say or comment on anything. People have become far too sensitive about everything and make their life choices the problem and concern of others. Sage even witnessed a teacher quickly correcting herself when referring to a student’s now-changed gender, calling her ‘person’ instead of the girl she was.

‘People get in less trouble for punching someone in the face than calling someone a wrong gender’, Sage commented during our discussion.

We are all now having to tiptoe around this political correctness as we try to remember if a girl is now identifying as a girl or a boy. Or something completely different, such as a cat, in the case of furries. It has gotten so out of control that we all have to fear the repercussions of not succumbing to these changes. This is confusing enough for us adults. How confusing do you think this is for teenagers who are trying to make sense of the transition from childhood to adulthood?

Instead of killing students’ spirits and damaging their mental health, you should be creating an environment to stimulate their minds.

Sage is also wondering what the reason is for his getting ISS today, as all of those reasons were dealt with in the three days of ISS already served.

The letter made no difference whatsoever. But I wrote another email after I got home this afternoon:

‘…As for the LEO decision, it seems Mr. Long is the one who made this decision in order to get rid of Sage. From what I know, that decision is beyond excessive. As examples, a student stomped on another student's face with their shoes and got ISS for a week. The boy who hit Sage with a metal water bottle got ISS for three days. Someone got caught vaping and got sent to LEO for 45 days. And now Sage gets 60 days at LEO for calling someone names. Names that one can hear from many students as you are walking down the hall and worse ones that even Sage's father heard other students say. Yet, my son is singled out. How absurd is that?!’