Sorry this is long, I have a lot of venting saved up.
This year their school has not done grandparents' day, the fall festival, *CURRICULUM NIGHT*, or pancakes with Santa-- all of which neighboring schools in our district do, and they have done previous years (and support of PTC is not the issue.) No explanation for not doing any of it.
Their principal is really crappy. He is the type that puts on a good show of looking good when the bosses are around, but the very basic stuff like saying hi to the kids in the morning and for the love of god, SMILING. as they walk into school for the day...nope- NEVER. (Why he doesn't just stay inside and let someone who will smile and greet them stand in front of the door is beyond me.) Their three years of field days he has never even come outside at all.
My 3rd grader started the year with weekly spelling tests and the teacher saying she doesn't give homework. Abruptly early Oct. that changed, "we will no longer be doing spelling tests in third grade", and now they have a crapton of homework. No explanation for the changes either. (It took DS1 almost 2 hours to do it the other night and he was working diligently and is pretty smart.) The teacher talked the room parents into raising $450 for her so she "has less paperwork" to deal with and assigns it all on some dumb computer program which as far as I can tell has no redeeming value (it's like basically paying for Quizlet type stuff that just quizzes them over and over, except they have a login and she can see that they've done it.) He's also watched 4 full movies already this year in class : the new Aladdin, the new Lion King, Hotel Transylvania, and one other movie I keep forgetting what it was. (My friend's husband is a principal that used to be in our district but now is in a different district and knows her and described her as "nice enough but pretty mediocre as a teacher" which I think sums it up well except I am seriously not thrilled that we are in early Nov. and he's already seen 4 movies at school...at this rate they will see 12 by the end of the year.)
This is our last year at this school, though. They are building a new school about 2 miles from our house and the boundaries have us going to it. (District also moved us to our current school as soon as it opened 3 years ago so next year will be DS1's third elementary school.) DS2 is challenging and has WONDERFUL teachers. I liked their teachers okay last year. The previous year DS1 had a great teacher. So I was totally just going to roll my eyes at it all and move on. (DS1's teacher has been teaching 30 years now so if she thinks she can show 4 movies a quarter, she probably can, and the principal sucks and likely wouldn't do anything even if I did complain. DS1 likes his teacher well enough and has his best friend in his class that he will be separated from next year so it's annoying but whatever.)
So yesterday I go to pick the kids up at the car line and a random person comes out that I've never seen before- kids also have no clue who she is- I guess maybe a hall monitor(?) ..She comes out with the kids just to tell me that principal says that we can no longer use the "turtle" car line anymore. "They tried to contact us" (lie- neither of us have any missed calls or messages), "and you can call principal if you have any questions". I went home and talked to DH who picks them up 90% of the time to see if I was missing something but he was just as baffled as I was. He calls principal but of course he's not in and did not return his message yesterday. (Even though we called pretty much immediately after school and talking.) We use the turtle line that is mostly kindergartners but some older kids because DS2 is slower and needs help getting buckled in DH's car. (The turtle line is a separate line for kids that need help buckling and never has had anything about age restrictions or rules about who can use it.) DS2 no longer has an IEP but last year had one that included fine motor skills. (And he lost his IEP only because he tested too well in speech, they don't do IEP's for only fine motor.) DH is going to try to deal with principal today but still pick kids up in turtle car line. Friend and her principal husband were like "just keep using it, what are they going to do?!" Still, I was just trying to get through this school year without dealing with this ass and now he's picking a fight over something dumb and bizarre and I don't even get it at all. (I quizzed the kids together and apart to see if there was something we were missing or anyone had talked to them, they had no idea either and DS2 will confess and/or tattle on his brother pretty easily so if there was something I am confident they would have mentioned it.)
Phew, that was a lot. Needless to say, I'm really thrilled to be going to the new school (whose principal has already been announced and is coming from DS1's first school which we loved entirely) even though DS1 will miss some friends.