Update!!!

Two years ago I posted a blog about two students whose parents seemed determined to help their child escape getting an education http://theteacherslounge.blogspot.com/2005_09_01_archive.html

I never knew what happened to the students after they left middle school......until this year. I happened to transfer to a high school a little closer to home and was having lunch one day when I happened to overhear two teachers talking about a student who was literally never at school but the parent expected them to send all his work home and give him passing grades. Curious, because the story sounded familiar, I asked who they were talking about. I almost choked when they said his name! It was the same student whose mother had been keeping him out of school for "medical" reasons throughout 8th grade! She would never produce any actual doctor's confirmation of a dibilitating illness and when we started to insist too loudly she pulled him out of school to "home school"him. Yeah, right. Well, my new school thought he had been home schooled so didn't have any reason to not go ahead and register him until the appropriate tests could be done to see if he could pass the standard tests to place him in high school. I went straight to his counsellor and gave him the details of my experience with him and then I e-mailed the teacher at my former school who had the unenviable position of being his homebound teacher. Within 24 hours the high school principal was given the necessary background and called in Fulton County attorneys. They gave the mother a specific deadline for medical records to be submitted or threatened her with arrest for keeping her child out of school. She waited until the last 12 hours before the deadline and then pulled him out of school to "home school" him again! Not falling for this a second time, the attorneys told her they would be checking to see if he was enrolled in the online classes he had to take to do high school and if he wasn't registered they would have her arrested! I'd love to hear the end of this but probably never will.
The other parent who pulled her son out of school when told he would have to repeat 8th grade apparently kept him home for a while and then enrolled him in 10th grade at my current high school! I happened to see him in the hall and once again, went to the counsellor to see if he knew the whole story. He didn't. All he knew was that she had brought him to school to register a few weeks after school started and he hadn't received any transfer records. Well, it seems that he just stopped coming to school shortly after they asked for the records and wouldn't answer the phone when the school called. Finally the school just withdrew him. I's love to know where he is today too!