Monday, July 21, 2008

Monday Mirth: Oh, If We Only Could...

A friend of mine forwarded the following to me via email. This has apparently been around the email block a few times and there is a story behind it…..Educators can certainly understand why this would be a “dream message” to place on the school answering machine, but it didn’t really happen. You can read the whole story over at Snopes.com.

Here is the message that the Pacific Palisades High School California staff voted unanimously to record on their school telephone answering machine.

This is the actual answering machine message for the school. This came about because they implemented a policy requiring students and parents to be responsible for their children's absences and missing homework.

The school and teachers are being sued by parents who want their children's failing grades changed to passing grades - even though those children were absent 15-30 times during the semester and did not complete enough school work to pass their classes.

The outgoing message:

Hello! You have reached the automated answering service of your school. In order to assist you in connecting to the right staff member, please listen to all the options before making a selection:

To lie about why your child is absent - Press 1

To make excuses for why your child did not do his work -Press 2

To complain about what we do - Press 3

To swear at staff members - Press 4

To ask why you didn't get information that was already enclosed in your newsletter and several flyers mailed to you - Press 5


If you want us to raise your child - Press 6

If you want to reach out and touch, slap or hit someone - Press 7

To request another teacher, for the third time this year - Press 8

To complain about bus transportation - Press 9

To complain about school lunches - Press 0

If you realize this is the real world and your child must be accountable and responsible for his/her own behavior, class work, homework and that it's not the teachers' fault for your child's lack of effort: Hang up and have a nice day!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...
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EHT said...

Not trying to stop free speech, however, I hate those evil spammers. :)

Amy @ The Q Family said...

That's so funny. Can they really put it to use? :) I would love to see how many parents are actually press any number.

-Amy @ The Q Family

M-Dawg said...

This post hits the nail on the head regarding my school district. Attendance is a HUGE problem at my school (as it is in other school districts across the country) - it did get better this past school year since we implemented a new attendance policy.