Hungarian Dancing

The whole public school system seems to be incredibly inefficient and not at all designed to be parent friendly or even geared to best help the children enrolled in it.  To be blunt about it, their customer service sucks.  I’ve spent days on the phone with them.  I’ve been down there in person.  The people at the school district are doing the Hungarian D*ck Dance.

You don’t know this term?  It comes from a grandmother I know.  She went to Europe on vacation and came home with tales of Hungarian male folk dancers who stand with their hands folded over their crotches and look musical while the women dance around them. (I’ve googled it and it looks nothing like this.  I don’t know what country she was actually in. It’s not my saying.  I just use it.)  Standing around, looking busy while other people make you look busy and you pretend to be doing something.  The Hungarian D*ck Dance.  The people at the school district are experts at it.

People wonder why I despise the public schools.  They get offended by my loathing.  I like the teachers I know.  I hate the system.  It is a phenomenal waste of time and resources.  It is sucking up my energy and stressing out my son who just wants to know which school will be his.  It seems like an easy question but it turns out that it s complicated.

He will have to start on Day 1 at a school without the resources he needs.  If there is room at a different school, he will be transferred on Day 2. They do the testing he needs there. In the third week, and not before, they will begin testing him (repeating many of the tests his psychologist already did) to determine what kind of services he actually needs. These tests will take 30-45 days to complete.  (They’ve had 70 days since I enrolled him, but nobody was available during the summer to test him.  This makes no sense to me.)  Then at the end of October or mid-November when the results are in, they will at last transfer him to the school he should have attended all along. They will have wasted an entire semester of his time.

I’ve tried to explain anxiety disorders.  I’ve begged for them to just start him in the school which the head of Special Services admits he needs to attend.  They have procedures which must be followed and what is best for my son’s mental health is irrelevant. 

I’m not sure exactly what is going on at the school district offices, but I’m pretty sure that there are Hungarians there and that they’re dancing.