Glen Rock Parent » School

Keep your child at home

Jeff Gothelf — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 05:08:26 +0000

And so the cold and flu season is upon us. It’s a tough time of year for parents as we attempt to go about our lives – whether we’re employed full-time, part-time or a full-time parent – and attempt to keep our child on their routine. The petri dishes our children dip in and out of each day make it inevitable that they’ll bring home various versions of the cold and flu viruses. Of course this year we have the bigger concerns of the H1N1 virus to maintain our stress levels at seasonal highs. What to do when your kid starts exhibiting symptoms?

Are they sick? Do they have a fever? Are they well enough to go to school? If I don’t send them I have to re-arrange my schedule, arrange childcare, take a sick day myself….the hassle starts to grow exponentially.

Every parent has a different threshold of tolerance for what constitues sick in their and also in other kids. In addition some parents are simply more germophobic than their neighbors. The decision starts to dwell in those pesky shades of gray as opposed to the clear extremes of the rich hues (aka black and white). An easy way to determine whether or not your kid is school-worthy (assuming they are not running a high fever) is to ask yourself the following question:

“If my child’s friend came over to my house and was exhibiting these symptoms, would I want them near my kid?”

If the answer is a solid “No” then you should not send your child to be around their friends in school. However if you feel comfortable with answering “Yes” to that question, then your child should probably go to school. This has to be a clear-cut choice. If you’re on the fence, then the answer is “No.”

Keeping your child home let’s them rest and get better. They will get healthy faster. In addition they will keep other kids healthier by not infecting them (an infection that could very easily come right back to your child). Also, teachers will be healthier. The less teachers have to miss a day at work, the better off our children will be.

Let’s work to keep our kids healthy and safe this cold and flu season.

What do you think? Is there a better way to determine when to send your child to school? Share you thoughts in the comments.

Giving thanks!

Jeff Gothelf — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:49:04 +0000

It’s a short week. Lots of food, fun and family happening this week. Happy Thanksgiving from GlenRockParent.com folks. If you can make it, attend your children’s holiday plays and events. They do love it. There will likely be a lull in activity during this week but we will return to our regularly scheduled programming next Sunday/Monday.

Happy Holidays!

p.s. – don’t forget, we’re still looking for contributors to help round out the content of this blog. Email info@glenrockparent.com to let us know you’re interested.

There’s a lot of room for improvement

Jeff Gothelf — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:27:40 +0000

In most of the communications sent from the Glen Rock school system, they always reference “the web site.” If you need further information, it’s online and available at all times. That’s pretty sweet. Except it’s not. The web site is attrocious. Have you tried finding something on there lately?

The design is dated but, more importantly, the content is organized in such a way that it makes the adults using feel like first grade students. This is true of ALL the system’s sites and it’s time for a redesign. This shouldn’t have to be costly but even if it does cost a bit, the savings gained from the reduced time supporting curious and confused parents would be well worth the cost.

What do you think? Have you used the Glen Rock School System web sites? What was your experience. Tell us in comments.

Come to school….but leave the kids at home

Jeff Gothelf — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 03:10:32 +0000

While the Glen Rock school system certainly plans plenty of interesting and enriching activities for our kids that include our participation you have to, at times, question the planning and rationale that go into some of these events. Specifically, at issue is the restriction on bringing younger siblings to any of these events. Many of the kids in our school system have younger siblings — many are not quite school age — and at least one of the parents stays home with that child.

It seems, however, that the school system does not want you to bring these younger siblings to any of the events that include us (the parents) in them. Any parties, holiday celebrations, performances, rehearsals are all off-limits to the toddlers and babies. Exacerbating the problem is the lack of notice given prior to these events. The notices typically come, at most, one week in advance and explicitly state “no younger siblings.”

It seems highly unlikely that most stay-at-home parents have a babysitter standing at-the-ready for a quick 30 to 60 minute shift with just a couple of days’ notice. What this forces is a choice between children — school kid or toddler? It puts the parent in a tough spot and ultimately forces a sacrifice for the event.

This policy needs to be reconsidered. There is no way a stay-at-home parent can accommodate this requirement on a regular basis leaving their school kid without their companionship on these special days. This issue is probably not as big of a deal for working parents as their toddlers are already in day care but I’m sure there are times when they’d like to bring the sibling since they’ve already taken the time off from work to be there.

The schools do a great job in trying to involve the parents in many activities. Thank you for that. Now, please consider our day-to-day situation and let the siblings attend.