First Day of School
It finally happened, and on the first day of school! No one picked up my first grader from school.
For two years, I have shared driving-to-pre-school duties with our babysitter while I worked part-time. When my daughter started kindergarten last year, we also participated in a parent carpool two days a week, which made scheduling even more complicated. However, neither of my kids had ever been forgotten at school, until now.
My daughter started first grade this year, and it was more chaotic than normal because Tropical Storm Fay was threatening Florida. Our county decided on Monday afternoon to cancel the first day of classes which had been scheduled for Tuesday. I talked to my babysitter on Monday evening to tell her school was cancelled Tuesday, but that she could pick up the kids the rest of the week as long as school was in. So we had an unscheduled vacation day on Tuesday, didn’t get any bad weather to speak of, and then I took everyone to school/preschool on Wednesday morning. But I didn’t think to call and remind our babysitter. I just assumed that she would call me if she wasn’t sure.
I got home from work around 4:30, and no one was home. This wasn’t a cause for panic, as our babysitter sometimes took the kids for ice cream or to the park. I called her cell phone, and got the news – she was having boyfriend issues, and she was having a bad day in general, and completely forgot to pick up the kids, and the elementary school called her at 3:55 (more than an hour after school ended at 2:40), and she had gone and picked my daughter up immediately. She was now headed to the preschool to pick up my son. The preschool wasn’t a problem because they were open until 5:30, and kids left at varying times, so my son probably didn’t even notice that she was late. My daughter, on the other hand, came in the house with an angry look on her face, and even though she didn’t cry while she was sitting in the office at school, she had a meltdown over a “seemingly unrelated” minor issue within about a half hour of arriving home. My poor dear!!
I was aggravated that our babysitter forgot, but she has worked for us for several years and always has been very reliable about her responsibilities for picking the kids up, etc. I felt guilty too for not calling to remind her – I’m the mom, it’s really my fault no matter what.
My question was why didn’t the school call me? And why did they wait so long to make the calls? The next morning I stopped by the office and amid the chaos, I learned that they made a mistake too. Apparently, there were a number of kids waiting, and because it was the first day, and parents hadn’t turned in new contact forms, etc., the office really was scrambling to locate old contact info, etc. That doesn’t explain why they didn’t call me at any of my three contact phone numbers, but at least we had correct information on file. Thank goodness my daughter wasn’t in kindergarten – there wouldn’t have been any emergency contact info to be had. On the other hand, I’m very glad to hear that she was safe and supervised after being stranded at school for more than an hour.
Not the best start to the school year, but I’m happy to report that my daughter has been dropped off and picked up on schedule since then, and the school year is going well.
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Well, after that you don’t have to worry about them bugging you to chaperon the next field trip
. Hey, at least you got your bad day out of the way early. It’s all up from here!