difficult child's home school

[klmno]

difficult child had A's & B's both at Department of Juvenile Justice, where he was the first 2/3 of the school year, then at his home school. But there are two things I am having an issue with them over. Both pertain to his transferring from Department of Juvenile Justice and then being put into detention after transferring back to this home sd.

First: In Algebra, they didn't put his incoming grades in the computer system for waht seemed like forever so when 3rd quarter grades came out, the computer spit out an F. They finally went back and put the grades in, resulting in an A average, however, it didn't change the F on the record so I think the F got sent to the detention center and will be averaged in for the final grade for the year.

Second: Department of Juvenile Justice gives high school credits per semester (ie- if a semester is completed, the student gets 1/2 credit even if it's a year ling class), but this sd does not. I don't know what the detention center does. Anyway, difficult child had an A or B in Spanish class. The detention center does not teach Spanish as a rule- they have no Spanish teacher. However, they will work with a home sd and give the kid whatever work a teacher from the sd provides in order for the kid to continue the regular course work since detention is considered short term. Now, the home sd has finished their regular school year so even though detention has school throughout the summer, the home sd will not work with them to provide course work for Spanish so difficult child can make up the last month or so of this class during this summer. The result of this is that he loses the entire credit for the year.

He had signed up for Spanish 2 next year. He already told me that if they expected him to take Spanish 1 over because of this, he will forget the whole thing. (Foreign language is not required for the standard diploma. He was going for the advanced diploma and three years of foreign language is required for that.) Neither of us are so worried about him getting the advanced diploma at this point, it just really annoys me that they won't give him credit or work with him to let him make this up.

Should I be looking at it like this is a natural consequence for him getting into trouble again, or should I be looking at it like it's not his fault they don't teach Spanish in detention and he shouldn't lose a year's credit when he completed 3/4 of the year and had an A at the end of the time he did put in?

 

[klmno]

Oh- they are finishing up the last week of school this week and are hounding me to bring textbooks and JROTC uniform back. But they've had 2 months to get a $50 deposit back to me and still haven't done that!

 

[LittleDudesMom]

k,

I'm really not sure about this....do you know if these issues are addressed in some legal way?

Part of me says these are the natural consequences he must realize for the choices he made - the other part of me says that if, in fact, mistakes were made, they should be rectified. Mostly speaking to the math issue. I do agree that you both shouldn't be concerned with the type of degree at this point - rather getting out and back in school for some consistent period of time.

difficult child may not need his foreign language credits for the standard diploma in our state, but he is going to need 6 elective credits (if I remember correctly, don't some of these have to be is succession?) and 1 fine or practical arts credits to receive the standard diploma.

Be careful about those textbooks - here in the city you have until a certain date in late June and then the cost gets attached to you somehow - might be on our utility bill or something.....

Sharon

 

[klmno]

I took the stuff back to the school yesterday. Then today I got a call from a teacher saying difficult child will fail her class for the year- why? because they have him listed as absent for the past month. It seems the detention center school and home sd can't get enrollment/transfer documents passed between them for weeks so now if I don't stay on top of this, all difficult child's grades will be transferred to the detention center as F's. This is so absurd. It's all because they don't submit appropriate paperwork for so long that the grading period is complete and it goes in as zeros even though he's been at detention this whole time.

If he had been failing anyway it wouldn't be a big deal- but he had all A's & B's and I'm to a point where I'm thinking this would NOT be appropriate punishment or consequences.

 

[susiestar]

I think I would be fighting to get the credits for my kid. Maybe this isn't the right way to think about it, but it just seems to me that so far school work was one thing difficult child did. With grades like As and Bs he was even turning in homework, which is a GIANT issue for so many difficult children. He is going to have an enormous amount of adjusting to do when he finally gets released back into the world. Taking away these credits will only serve to make him have to do that much more adjusting and work. given how overwhelmed life in the "real" world seemed to be for him, how hard a time he had just following very simple rules, it would be unrealistic to expect him to handle this well. With these grades turned to Fs it seems like he would just have another, in my humble opinion overwhelming, reason to toss his hands up and say "F*** T***" and walk away from school to go party.

Getting things straightened out to give him credit will NOT make him see that it is worth it to follow the rules. That would be a fairy tale. It would be one less battle to fight. If your state university system is like ours there is some sort of scholarship system to give kids with good grades some funding for college. If these grades turn to Fs it will mean that $$ is totally out of reach. He may not get it anyway, but if he thinks there is no way he will ever get help with college then he will stop trying to ever get there. It would be a huge waste of a good brain.

If you cannot end up saving one or all of the grades at least you will know that you tried, that you fought this battle. difficult child will know you didn't give up on him and THAT may go a long way toward eventually helping him also.

 

[klmno]

I went to the school again today. This time I talked to the registrar and she had just become aware of the potential nightmare situation of difficult child's grades being reported by teachers as F's/zeros. She had been talking to someone about it and fortunately, they had just recieved grades from the detention center- all A's. However, since those did not include any grade for JROTC or Spanish (detention school doesn't teach those classes), difficult child will not get credit at all for them. That is the downside for me advocating against difficult child being sent back to Department of Juvenile Justice, where they would have taught these thru the summer to make up for any time lost this spring. And difficult child would have gotten credit.

The school is suggesting taking Spanish 1 over during the summer of 2011 and the taking Span 2 and 3 his Junior and Senior year if he really wants to get the advanced diploma- that's a good idea if difficult child gets his head together and stsicks to this. At least it isn't impossible.

Anyhoooo...tthe good news is that they are changing his overall grade in the admin office to average in the grades from detention instead of using the teachers' grades from this last marking period. (The teachers didn't even know difficult child was in detention.) So, difficult child barely has enough credits to move up and be a sophomore but his GPA will be over a 3.0 and maybe over a 3.5.

Now he will have a choice to either take Spanish 1 again or take Biology 2 instead of Spanish 2 next year. Unless I can get this next school to do something about the Spanish 1, but it doesn't look like that wiill be possible- it would take an admin over-ride. I'm going to talk to them just in case. The advantage of the Biology 2 though is that difficult child is already signed up to take Chemistry and apparently this new school has gotten a grant to fund certain college prep tracks and are allowing qualified students to take 2 AP or college prep science classes if desired. They say it is actually easier to learn it this way. difficult child still says he wants to be a vet and he took Biology 1 this past year. I'll talk to him and see what he wants to do. I'm not even going to mention that he could choose to take some other elective that he'll just consider an easy A. LOL!

Also, as part of his consequences he obviously won't be able to take driver's ed this summer so I had signed him up for it in the fall. I just found out that in order to qualify to take it in the fall, he'd have to have his learner's permit the week before he's supposed to get out of detention. I'll ask about that since it doesn't make since- he could still have it before the fall class starts. But, if he has to wait until spring to take it, then so be it.