This 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 schoolwork 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!

 

I like it, but it's been quite a transition.

My kids were in school through 91, and the official position seemed to be that ' they didn't need us'.

It started when my daughter was in elementary, and had difficulty spelling.
The school started sending her to special help sessions. (Without telling us).
We found out and asked how this worked.
- She went out of class at certain times to a spelling session.
- There they gave her a simplified spelling list and extra practice.
- Despite assurances to the contrary, she was missing out on regular
class information because she was at spelling.

We asked how giving her reduced assignments would get her to the normal level, and they said that they didn't want her to get 'discouraged'.

My wife told them where to put their special spelling, and asked to get the spelling list each week. She then worked with my daughter, and eventually got her to getting 100s in spelling. My daughter (and my wife) will always have trouble spelling -- many people do. But, my daughter now knows that she can produce good results through hard wor.

The same school also told me that my daughter was somewhat behind in her reading. (My daughter now runs a succesful business). That teacher was affronted when I asked for details. After some fuming, she finally showed me how she was doing vs the school average, and vs the national average. She wasn't bad, but the school average was higher than many. That's what I needed to know! They liked to phrase things vaguely, and then assure you that they would somehow salvage whatever they could.

Sorry about the rant. I appreciate teachers, I really do, and I can appreciate the answering machine message. However, I will say that for years, schools seemed to be of the opinion that they could manage the kids better without the parents. After years of negative results, they're finally admitting that maybe the professionals can't do it by themselves.

ford2go

 

Sierraben:

Check out the following link to Snopes by copying and pasting it to your browser. This allleged telephone answering machine message at the Pacific Palisades High School is false, as noted in the latter part of the following link:

http://www.snopes.com/humor/iftrue/palisades.asp

 

Doesn't surprise me. Did seem a bit far fetched.

I just decided to post it because I thought it was humorous.

Next thing Snopes will say that there isn't a Santee Crause, or an Easta Wabbit.

 

saw the same joke on thehun.net

 

I received that joke in my email.

I'm not going to check out Snopes every time I get a joke.

Ruins the fun/humor.

 

it is a very funny message

 

Thank you, Sometimes people just need to recognize a joke when they see one instead of complaining that it's not actually true. How in the world do some people get through an episode of Leno or Letterman?

 

my mom can still tell everyone the joy she had with the school i went to, pretty much they summed it up that parents inputs are not welcomed.