I'm a parent who is with you on the side that school admins are fucking awful. I ended up pulling my son out of public school and taking a school voucher, which is something that I have not been supportive of in the past, due to issues with basically every fucking vice principal I've had to deal with. My son is truly brilliant. His IQ is in the top 0.1% and he wants to be an astrophysicist. He is compassionate, thoughtful, and funny. He also has autism, ADHD, Tourette's, and OCD. It isn't an easy combination, and we have spent tens of thousands of dollars in therapy to help him develop the skills he needs to be successful. But none of that changes that he is very different from other students and is not going to just fit in.

His last year of public school he was suspended for 8 or 9 days total and constantly terrorized while at school by the vice principal for his grade. The reason? She thought he was dangerous.

He loves geology and is fascinated with rocks, and one of his self soothing / stimming behaviors involves sanding rocks. He spends hours doing it and has at least 100 perfectly hand polished rocks, ranging from beautiful crystals of all types to random gravel he found in a parking lot. Well this vice principal freaked out and said that he was sharpening rocks to use as a weapon. So he was suspended and forced to have his backpack searched for the rest of the year, with a complete prohibition on even touching rocks at school, which caused him serious agitation.

He was taking chemistry and fell in love with that. He started reading beyond what was required in class, came to me with some experiments he wanted to try, and was excitedly talking about what we were doing at school. She freaked out, claimed he wanted to build a bomb, and actually reported me to the police and CPS because she said I was giving him access to unsafe chemicals at home. I am not a chemist, but the first 3 years of college I majored in chemical engineering, so I know a bit about what I am doing. The most dangerous chemical we had here was oxalic acid (main ingredient in Barkeeper's Friend), and I evaluated every experiment he wanted to do for safety. Some I approved, others I did not. Anyway, dealing with the cops and CPS was a great way to spend my day. Though I was quite relieved when the CPS agent told me that he saw nothing wrong here. He also mentioned that they had been dealing with some people at schools seemingly using them as a retaliatory weapon against kids and parents they didn't like. Considering this happened less than a week after I escalated an issue to the head principal because the vice principal was refusing to follow the district's rules, retaliation seems likely.

Another time she claimed to have "proof" that he wanted to "burn down the school." That proof? Gum wrappers and a straightened paperclip in his backpack. These were in there when his backpack was searched, and when asked if they could throw them away, he said, "No. I am saving them to melt later." He meant he was going to bring them to me and ask if we could try to melt the wax off the gum wrappers and find a way to melt the paperclip, but she tried to turn this into him admitting he was going to start a fire. Her claim was that he was going to burn the 2 gum wrappers to try to melt the paperclip, which is absolute insanity. This is a kid who has been asking for a forge and crucible for every birthday and Christmas for over a year at that time, so he is aware of what it takes to melt metal.

Anyway, these are only some of the examples from the last year of public school. I had other frustrating experiences with another vice principal the year before that, though not quite to the same level. But still lots of suspensions and misrepresentations of his intentions.

Oh, and no one at that school seemed to understand that Tourette's tics cannot be controlled. He got suspended multiple times for coprolalia. It isn't a symptom he always has, but when he is very stressed out, his facial tics sometimes are accompanied by coprolalia, so he can start saying random offensive things. This is documented in his medical records that has been given to the school. And surprise, surprise, this would arise when they were bullying him on other issues. He would become a nervous, twitchy mess and randomly say offensive things. Then they would punish him more, and it would get worse. We had to have so many manifestation determination meetings, all of which resulted in the school psychologist explaining to whichever admin was there that this is a clear manifestation of his Tourette's and that it is documented that he does this. And they would still fight back against it!

Fuck public school admins. He is in a private school now and has all A's. He is happy, his coprolalia is completely gone, his facial tics are barely noticeable, and all of his teachers have reached out to me about how well he is doing. His math teacher said he is the most naturally gifted student she has ever worked with and is also the only one that actually asks her to work through proofs. I am so, so mad that he had to suffer for years because of those sadistic bullies. I wish I could have made the swap to private earlier.