Swing and a Miss

I spend the next 20 minutes grand standing like a seasoned litigator. I use my experience with Pat's situation, which we'd just dissected in extensive detail, to point out the myriad failings of their so-called system in the making.

The lost reports speak of the disorganization.
The botched attempts to intervene in the cafeteria and the science classroom indicate that they were inexperienced and bumbling.
The lack of information about the school's stance on Bullying tells me they had not taken one.
The focus on the administrivia and the idiotic poster were clear demonstrations that they choose to focus on the legal definitions and technical compliance as opposed to effectiveness.
The volume of complaints is empirical data proving the kids know the students have the upper hand. Anarchy at its best.

They let me argue my case to the end, and only then does anyone object. No, no, I have it all wrong. They really are committed and really do know what they are doing. They are the experts. Really they are.

I close my notebook, place it in my open briefcase, and stand. McDuff looks a little surprised and can't conceal his relief that I am going.

As I walk toward the back wall of the office like I own the place, I say, "Don't get too excited, I'm not leaving yet." I remove a push pin, take the ridiculous circus poster on Bullying from the wall and walk over to McDuff. I give him the poster to review as I stand over him just as a teacher would when reviewing a pupil's work. (Hum the Jeopardy theme now.)

"In the absence of anything comprehensive in your handbook, is this what you are using to cover the district's collective derriere legally?"

His head snaps up to look at me. I continue. "Because according to the statute I read last night, it doesn't meet state law requirements."

He says what he has to say. "Yes. Yes, it does, and so does the handbook."

I sit. I retrieve and reopen the notebook. "Your handbook, which I hold in my hand, in its definition of Bullying, uses the word "bullying." I look at the other Principal, who has been pretty quiet for a while now. I notice that she is taking pages upon pages of notes. I am pleased to see that. I want this written down. And repeated to someone. Someone who will do something about it.

I say, "As you know, I attended this school and right here in these classrooms I learned that you can not use the word you are defining in the definition of that word. Was that not right?"

No argument. I continue. "And the definition lists a litany of offenses that fall under the umbrella of cyber or electronic bullying, but nowhere in your definition does it mention physical aggression. The law says you need both. Has it suddenly become OK to clean someone's clock on the playground?"

"No, of course not," the Notetaker offers.

"OK, so let's not waste anymore time arguing that point, and agree that this, (and with this statement I wave the paper like an insolent teenager and make a little smartassed face) needs to be rewritten. At once." I see that she writes that down on her pad and am secretly grateful that I read upside down. I am tempted to joke "Please enter this document into the record as Exhibit A, Your Honor.")

"And by the way, it was not lost on my that your handbook devotes a mere 19 words to this topic while your dress code rambles on for two and a half pages of drivel about strappy tank tops and low rise pants."

"Now," I command as I snatch the poster from McDuff. His grace period for familiarizing himself with it has just expired. "Let's talk about this." And again, I am waving the poster like a smartass.

My audience is rapt.

Strike Two

I decide to make them sweat a little by not speaking right away.

I remove a highly organized file from my high end leather brief case.

I am confident the no one in the room will notice that it is still embossed with my married name monogram.

I retrieve a smart looking pen from the same high end briefcase and remove the pretty little screw-off cap.

I gracefully uncross and recross my ankles and open my file with my flawlessly manicured hands (Thank you, Hil for the spa treatment.)

I am sure they are panicking. Clearly I’ve studied the game films.
Without looking at the contents of the file, I quietly clear my throat.

“I need to be frank with you, “ I say.

“Oh, of course! Please do!”exclaims McDuff with a welcoming gesture. He’s trying to look collected and unflappable.

“You, and by “you” I mean you personally, and you collectively, are unprepared and ill-equipped to deal with bullying on any level at this school. Further what inconsequential measures you do have in place are nothing more than lip service, and suggest to me that you are not really genuinely interested in this topic.” I took a breath to continue.

Before I could go much further, McDuff jumps in. “Oh no no no! We are very well aware of the importance of preventing bullying!” He has to say that, of course. He then goes on and on in an effort to wow me with all the neat things they have “in the works.” An online reporting system being tweaked for launch in a month or two. A seminar (the same one from last year and the year before) about cyberbullying (And what about bullying like they did before Alexander Graham Bell and the advent of crank phone calls?). Whips out a nifty two page checklist for conducting an investigation. It needs some tweaking, too, so it won’t make its debut until spring. I will be in Depends before they have their act together.

“With all due respect,” (there I go again) I am not interested in what you are going to do. What matters is what you have now. And frankly I am shocked at what you don’t have in place. This is not a new issue. You have nearly nothing and you know it. And your kids know it, too. And that is why you, Dr. McDuff have 75 complaints stuffed in your padfolio that you can’t organize let alone address. You are so caught up in perfecting and tweaking your back-of-the-house administrative tools that you have failed to make any kind of position statement to your kids. You haven’t told them what you expect. Nero is fiddling while Rome burns.”

McDuff is leaning away from me now. A defensive posture. “So what you are saying is…”

I cut him off. “What I’m saying is that you have a very serious problem exploding in your face and you won’t even begin to address it because you don’t have any idea how to address it! Your policy is pathetic and you have no procedural guidelines. I am beginning to feel a little badly about how I responded to your mishandling things with Pat. It’s not your fault. You have nothing and no one to tell you what to do.

He picks up on the idea that we were very much at odds during the email exchanges. He tries to assert that we are beyond that now, and can collaborate peaceably.

My ass.

I said, “Dr. McDuff, things did get a little prickly during our email conversation. My kid was getting picked on at your school and you were ready to ignore it and dismiss the whole things as “normal adolescent dynamics.” There is no normal teenage dynamic that includes hitting my kid. I am sure it would be convenient for you if there were, but there isn’t. And now that we’ve established THAT, I have no confidence at all that you’ll have any clue how to handle the next situation. Or anything else already in the pile of complaints sticking out of your notebook over there.”

Wake Up Call

First off, the Big Principal who assumes I know who she is without an introduction needs to leave to cover cafeteria duty. The counselor who is assigned has a crisis to deal with.

Then the 8th grade counselor needs to arrive a few minutes late. She is wrapping up a crisis.

McDuff takes a phone call before taking a seat. Two more crises.

I look at the 9th grade principal. “Where’s your crisis, Calamity Jane?”

I am the first to speak. This is going to be MY meeting dammit and nothing says so like taking to the podium before being invited to do so.

Housekeeping items first. I’d like to obtain copies of the reports filed by Pat and Lars a week ago.

Oh! And speaking of housekeeping, there is a 1000-legger slithering across the floor toward McDuff’s shoe if anyone is interested.

McDuff has several notebooks with him that are brimming with papers that are stuck in haphazardly at all angles. He starts rifling through the papers to find Pat’s complaints. He is making idiotic small talk the whole time and tries to distract me with some flier I should have gotten on Back to School Night but did not. It was jammed in one of the notebooks and a good prop if he aimed to distract, but I was not that easily distracted.

What I focus on is the fact that as McDuff examines forms, and turns over sheets of paper, and unfolds documents in search of Pat’s complaints, I can observe that about half of the papers were similar complaints submitted by other students. Too many to count. And all just stuffed in a folder where they will probably just get ignored.

I reach out to McDuff. I need to stop him. I really don’t want to be sitting in the principal’s office all day with my hand on my ass. I tell him he can find them later. I have a few points to address.

I ask all the questions Lars and I discussed (before he turned all to mush and didn’t want to push any buttons.)

Why was nothing done the moment Pat complained.

Oh they responded.
They changed the lunch tables.
The kids just didn’t listen

And moved Kevin’s Science seat.
They just didn’t know who the other two kids were or they would have given that some thought.
And they called Kevin’s mom but she wasn’t home.

I am sure Ashton Kutcher is going to bound from the closet to inform me that I’ve been punked.

I want to scream at them. Did anyone in their years upon years upon years of academic experience devoted to educating young people ever talk with a real live young person?

I take a broader approach.

I tell them that as they know, kids at this age are testing. Testing limits. Testing boundaries. Testing their environment. Testing your mettle.

They should have anticipated that the kids would not comply with the cafeteria rearranging. The kids called their bluff. Gambled and won. They guessed that McDuff et al would lay down the law and walk away assuming in all his hubris that Pharaoh’s law would be followed. So let it be written, so let it be done. Fools.

I let them wallow in their ass-facedness and then moved quickly to make some demands about follow up on Pat’s situation. Gained some assurances that I would not have to darken their collective door for this purpose again.

And just as McDuff was restuffing and closing his notebooks and breathing a sigh of relief, I moved promptly onto the bigger reason I had come to see them.

The looks of disbelief were priceless.

Game Time

At the appointed hour, I drive to the school, take my high-end leather briefcase and fabulous Kenneth Cole bag from the car, smooth my hair, touch up my lipstick and strut into the school.

The fat, dumpy secretary asks me to sign in and to mar my fabulous outfit by affixing a neon yellow, 3x5 visitor sticker to my lapel.

Umm, hello, 99% of the occupants of this building are under the age of 14. And I will hardly blend in with the female portion of the other 1% with their broomstick skirts and knit twinsets and comfy wedge loafers. Just showing up I stand out in the one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-others department. I fill out the friggin' sticker and feign adhering it to my fabulous jacket. So sorry, what was your name? Beatrice? Sorry not to comply. You are welcome to chase me down the corridor to make me if you could pry your fat arse from your ergo-engineered wheely chair. But the safe money is on me. Even in the pointy little bitch on wheels shoes I'm teetering around in today.

McDuff comes out and acts all happy to greet me.

Stuff it, asswipe. I am your worst nightmare come roaring to life. You will wish the living dead had arrived instead.

He leaves me to get some last minute things while I scan the walls for signs of the Bullying Poster. I only have read it in headache-inspiring tiny print on an 8.5X11 page. I am certain it would be much larger in the classroom.

Not.

I spot one flapping in the breeze created by the oscillating fan behind Beatrice the Sweaty. It is just one increment larger in the standardized paper world. 11.5X14. The font would still give you a migraine.

Then McDuff returns and makes small talk as we traipse to the Big Principal's office. We walk through the corridor that used to connect the Junior High to the Senior High 100 years ago. My high school boyfriend (a year or two after Scott dated his way across the township and left for college like any handsome 18 year old would have done) had become a mural artist and had returned to our alma mater to paint a mural in the corridor. I wish I had more time to study it. The smartass undoubtedly painted in some hidden snarky references and messages I'd be sure to understand.

McDuff is naively going on and on enthusiastically telling me all about the rich history of the school. I tell him to stop, I went there a hundred years ago. And then to illustrate that point, tell him about the mural and my relationship to the artist.

He thinks it is Pat's father.

Really? It was the 80s. And hello, the artist's name is plain as day on the painting and it is neither Lars' name or mine. And artists usually don't have to conceal their identities. Anyone ever heard of a Nom de Paintbrush? I think not.

I clarify that it was a High School boyfriend, and at least 100 boyfriends later, I met Pat's Dad (and should have kept going) so no, the mural artist and I have no current connection.

He asks if it is bittersweet to see his work.

Do I look like I'm pining?

Umm, no. The Artist Formerly Known as My High School Boyfriend and I bump into each other at an occasional charity event in the city, and his mother still lives within striking distance of my house, but, geez, a lot changes in 3o years. I would not need to breathe into a paperbag at the sight of him. Where exactly is this office?

We turn a corner and enter a brightly lit office with a few plants and lots of paper. I am ushered to a chair and asked to make myself comfortable.

Oh, I am comfortable. Indeed I am. It is you, friend who will need to make the effort to remain comfortable.

Oh What A Beautiful Morning

The next morning I shower and shave all the shaveable parts, throw on some jeans and a t-shirt, brew some coffee, make the kids a nice hot breakfast, and wait for the smell of muffins to wake them. I have hours to kill.

I log on to my systems at work and piddle with a few projects, returning for more coffee and upgrades to the lunches I've packed every so often.

It is Friday. The kids return to Lars' Lair after school. It is always difficult to part. Pat and I used to fight all morning on Fridays. I think it helped him separate from me if he was good and mad and went to school thinking "Thank God she's out of my hair for a few days!"

But now it is all sweetness and "I'm gonna miss you, Mom" adoration. I tuck some money in cute little cards that encourage Hil and Pat and tell them how much I love them and how proud I am to be their Mom. Give them an opportunity to delay the descension into Hell by stopping at the pizza shop for a slice after school.

Pat is lured into the kitchen by the scent of blueberry muffins. He looks me over and asks why I am dressed like I am. Beads of sweat are forming on his head. I tell him that I am going to school to meet with this one and that one later.

He says he knows that, but by contrast, Dad had dressed for work before he'd gone to see the High Exalted Grand Poo Bah of Discipline. He'd dropped them off at school and gone right in.

Oh. My. God. He's worried about the impression I'll make in my Jack Daniels t-shirt.

I let him know that once I drop them off, I have a few hours before the meeting. (Thanks to the convenient and accommodating scheduling done by the same Grand Poo Bah.) I will spend that time fixing my hair and dressing to impress.

Pat is visibly relieved.

My thoughts turn to my own mother.

Estelle was not like anyone else's mother. (The Harper Valley PTA song starts going through my head when I think that thought.) She was at once, outrageous and enviable. I was torn between wanting to be just like her and fearing that she was laughable. She was lucky to have been pretty. If she had been a mambo-dog-face-in-a-banana-patch barker that kids secretly referred to as Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy, things would have been different. You'd never know what Estelle would come trotting out in, but you dare not question it. And since she was pretty enough to have pulled off wearing a barrel with suspenders and a wax paper hat, not much was said.

Good for Pat to have questioned my appearance. I am as much a representation of him and of Hil as I am of me. And it was never more important than today.

Ass-Kicking Eve

The night before the meeting I am talking with Kate.

I mention my appointment the next day and she is similarly amused with fly-on-the-wall desires to be there. "They have no idea what they are in store for," she says.

I tell her that I have been amazed to learn that with all the affluence and all the do-gooding that my neighborhood has been known for, (Politicians, and Olympians, and Grammy winners, and Novelists, and you-name-it-we've-produced-one-you-know-by sights) we are way behind in an issue as prominent in the news as Bullying. (Yes, with a capital B.)

She mentions that her school district has made an investment in this formal program and has trained the teachers, and meets with the students, and conducts role plays, blah blah blah. Her kid is 7. They are getting them young.

She can't remember the name of the program but I google her school district and search for "Bullying" and the flood gates open. (What the Hell did anyone do before Google? Sit in the research library hoping Britannica covered it in the last reprint?)

The program Kate's school has thrown themselves into body and soul is called Olweus, after the genius that created it. It is fabulous. Assessment tools. Laws by state. Tools that help a school begin to formulate a program. Links to resources. (Go ahead. You know you want to Google it. I'll wait.)

It is indeed comprehensive. And probably expensive. But if you want to make a convincing demonstration that you have a zero tolerance policy for Bullying, and that "Zero Tolerance" means that not even one instance of Bullying will be ignored or accepted, and intend to make that perfectly clear to the bullies and the bullied, then this is the program you buy into.

And Scott sends me a link. It is called "Kidscape" and it is just as powerful. Tools. Sample policies. Poster ideas. Canned speeches. All geared toward the person who is pushing the issue at a school - whether they are a school employee or a parent. And the best part for me was warnings about the things the school might tell me, like "We don't have any Bullying here at The Divine Joyous School of Equality and Benevolence." And things I can say back (minus the curse words I will inevitably feel compelled to insert.)

I organize my notes.
I highlight policies.
I print and underline the more ridiculous sections of the circus poster on Bullying.
I jot down a few court room closing argument zingers. Once I've bulleted them out, I can deliver like Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch.

I press my shirt.
I pick my jewelry.
I make sure the pointy, bitchy black heels are polished beyond reproach.
I set my alarm for a little earlier than usual. I want to make sure I have time to make myself shiny.
I look over the stylish black suit that says that I am not boring, not afraid to be a woman, and won't hesitate to leave your dignity in shreds without raising my voice.

Pat comes into my room before he goes to bed. He would really like to forget any of this is happening and wants to know what I am going to say. I tell him that I want to make sure his situation is over for good and I will ask for assurances of that.

I tell him what assurances I will ask for.

I also tell him that I am on a crusade. Once he stops rolling his little teenaged eyes, I tell him why it is important that I do. Because to do nothing when you know there is a problem is to be part of the problem. And maybe there is some kid out there whose Mom and Dad will not go into school and make an issue. I will be that kid's advocate, too.

And I feel a little like Atticus Finch, who walked the talk with Scout and Jem with his upstanding and fearless attitude. He said:

"When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness sake. But don't make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles 'em."

No evading on my part. Just straight forward information like you'd give to the answer to the question about where babies come from. Skirting the issue is not an option. And there is a lot to be learned in that.

Circling My Wagons

Later that day, I get a confirmation email that although "all the stakeholders were not available to meet at the original proposed time, we'd be happy to meet at 10 am Friday. Will Pat's father be joining us?"

Well if you'd include Pat's father on the email as I've asked 3 or 4 times, he'd be able to answer for himself, asswipe.

I forward the email to Lars and ask him to send them a reply.

I can tell from the email Lars sent to me in reply that he was concerned about my level of aggression toward the school. Like he was afraid they'd get so defensive they'd make things hard for Pat and Hil.

What a moron. Public school is the one place you can exercise your rights. They are always informing you of what they are. Usually on blue or peach paper. It's like they invite you to hold them accountable. Maybe no one does. I surely will.

He keeps asking what I hope to accomplish, and is most interested in the damn papers he filed with Pat. He is completely missing the point. I am learning that the school is completely inept when it comes to matters of bullying. We may resolve Pat's problem quite quickly. What happens when it is Hil? Or one of Pat's friends?

When he replies to McDuff that since he's already made two trips to the school he'll find it difficult to take time off to do so again, but that he is grateful for the effort that the school has made on Pat's behalf so far, I am afraid he's gone soft, and just as happy that he can't attend. I don't need his peacemaking milquetoast cowering interfering with my mission.

I set about information gathering and preparing for this meeting like Atticus Finch prepared his closing argument in defense of Tom Robinson. I got copies of other school district's policies. I got advice from websites geared toward creating awareness of bullying. I read and read and read.

And I open the documents McDuff had sent when I'd requested the policy against bullying and read them thoroughly again. The Harassment policy is thorough but no one here is making fun of Pat because of any affiliation with a protected class. And the handbook spends pages on the dress code, but devotes about 19 words to the definition of bullying. Uses the word "bullying" in the definition (Duh!), and mentions only things that would fall under the umbrella of cyber bullying. Makes no mention of physical violence. Doesn't anyone care about good old fashioned bloody-your-nose-on-the-playground bullying? And there isn't a single syllable written about bullying beyond its weak definition.

And again, I take to my iPhone and send an email to all of the administrators with whom I am scheduled to meet.

I am writing to inquire if there is an additional bullying policy that I can review.
I've read the links you sent and the Unlawful Harassment Policy is a standard policy that has no relevance to this situation.
The handbook barely mentions bullying, and poorly defines it. There is no procedural information at all.
The poster you initially sent seems to reference a more comprehensive position statement that I am hoping is fully articulated in a formal policy.
Please advise so that I may review thoroughly before we meet.

McDuff writes back the next morning.

"At the moment, these are the documents that guide our district."

Thought so. I have just painted him, and the district as well, into a corner without having even met yet.