School Trouble
Had an emergency meeting with Claire’s principal today. He’s an old family friend, so it wasn’t a hostile one, but the problem was serious. The story was told to us by Claire, but confirmed by her classmate Genia.
Apparently the cafeteria had been acting up during lunch yesterday, and when dismissal was called, only Claire followed procedure. The person on duty decided to punish the whole cafeteria (130 children in second and third grade) by making them sit at recess for five minutes while Claire played in the playground.
I admitted to him the absurdity of parents coming in to complain that their child wasn’t unfairly punished, but he isn’t stupid and understood immediately why what happened was a horrible mistake. 130 angry children punished by being forced to watch our daughter play in the playground? As Diana said, it’s almost Lord of the Flies level of twisted. Who was getting punished?
Claire is still oblivious to what happened, and in a week or so we’ll see if it blows over or blows up, but either way we needed to find out what the #%$@# they were thinking.
Update: Apparently they weren’t thinking at all.
Diana heard back from the principal and it turns out Claire’s description was accurate. The aides actually thought they were rewarding Claire for her good behavior.
Once again it is confirmed: no good deed goes unpunished.