Funny thing. Just yesterday Little Bear brought home in his backpack a letter from the school stating the importance of attendance and how “every single day” counts – even for Kindergarten. “Especially for Kindergarten.” The weight of this letter is not lost on me – both on a personal level and on a national level.

My youngest son is repeating Kindergarten for the third time because last year he spent the final quarter and a half in the hospital and the school district denied the educational funding for his placement (the hospital had a classroom through a different school district, which meant by law our school district would have had to send the money to them). I didn’t have the money to hire a lawyer to file Due Process and appeal their decision. Like it mattered though. By the time the dust had settled the school year would have been over and we still would have been in this same boat. It didn’t matter that I homeschooled him according to the state law during that time. They didn’t bother screening him or testing him when he returned for placement in their school. He automatically returned to Kindergarten. Period. I got no say in the matter.

Attendance has become that important to them. It doesn’t matter what your kid is doing or what’s going on. All that matters is the body count sitting at those desks. In some states, like Pennsylvania, it has reached the point where your child is considered habitually truant if they have missed more than 6 days of school within the year! Let me make this clear, that’s not 6 days in a row or 6 days in a month but they mean SIX UNEXCUSED DAYS IN THE ENTIRE SCHOOL YEAR. I’ll also point out that some school districts are given a lot of leeway on what is and isn’t a medically excused absence as I discovered the hard way with Little Bear. I’ll tell you what, this year every absence these boys have is going to be backed up with a doctor’s note. For whatever reason these people seem to think that mental instability isn’t a medical crisis. You try hallucinating giant spiders and see how well you do. If you can handle it better than my 7 year old you deserve a medal.

And I can guarantee you it’s all about the money. They can’t get a dime if your child isn’t there. It’s not the teachers I’m talking about here. They aren’t the ones making these calls. They aren’t the ones I’ve been fighting with. It’s the office desk people that never work with these kids. It’s the people that crunch the numbers, slap the budgets together, and build policies around them. It’s corporations steamrolling in lobbying for control of our schools claiming to make things better when all they really want is data on our kids. And we as parents of special needs children, desperate for the hope that our children will grow up to someday have jobs, are buying into this hook, line, and sinker. Don’t be fooled. These schmucks are willing to swap our kids’ medical records around like baseball trading cards. How are our children being better served in this mess when all children across the board throughout the nation on average are sinking? Think about that. They are not helping us. They are using us. They want us on their side, to be their mascots, and push their cause. Don’t do it. These are the people we are really fighting against.

I’m that frustrated with the system. I’m tired of trying to find an affordable apartment in some other school district with little hope that it will be a better placement for him – or worse, make my middle son regress. If my husband wasn’t so dead set against homeschooling Little Bear, that’s exactly what I would be doing right now. Seriously though, I want to stick it to them where it counts: right in the damn wallet.

So we can keep pissing and moaning about a broken system or we can save the date and take a stand.