Turned away from breakfast club! AIBU

[Mumsgotaheadache01]

So every 2 weeks I book and pay for blocks of breakfast club for my child. She goes every morning as I work. I turned up as usual at 7.50 this morning and popped her into her school reception and checked her in. Only to be told that she wasn't booked in on the list this morning. I questioned it and the receptionist said that it had been cancelled by payer. I then checked on my parentpay app and it said that my payments were cancelled! So that's obviously why it had removed my child from her bookings. I had certainly not cancelled her chilcare. I have over £50 loaded onto parentpay. So have absolutely no idea why this has happened. I was told that my little one could not come into breakfast club. So I had to sit in the car with a grumpy cold child who had had no breakfast, be late for work and wait for normal school drop off time. Am I being unreasonable to be upset by this . And wonder why parentpay would just cancel my booking like that. And to be really worried and anxious that this might happen again for no reason.

It sounds like you did really well to adapt to the situation and were prepared. As a single mum it’s always a juggling act and that’s why these unnecessary setbacks affect us more than other parents. Our lives are like jigsaw puzzles, every piece has to fit perfectly and it’s so frustrating when someone else’s fuck up messes things up despite our best efforts.

Maybe so, but in that case they need to be flexible when it glitches, as @RawBloomers put it.

There are a lot of alternative systems. Capita were super good at grasping naive head teachers by the short and curlies and grabbing 10yr contacts. Than they flogged their failing business to ESS. I have, currently, about four conflicting 'apps' (which aren't actually apps) for my child (Yr11). ParentPay is for lunch and trips, Class Charts gives me (apparently) a behaviour score. Then there's Tassomi. And the 'Stupid non app for dumb parents' app. School business managers are often among the most naive, ill qualified and ignorant people in the world. But - ultimately - they're employed by the Head. There is another way to be than aspiring to be a school governor. Neither of which are bad.

How did you have the heating on?
Please don't tell me you sat with engine running the whole time. People that do that are selfish idiots.

Yes, I agree. I think it's shocking if they had a place that they wouldn't accept OP's child, most especially in weather like this.

Trust me, I know!!!

What choice did she have?

You turn the heating on without the engine, your battery goes flat. My inexperienced driver DS did it to my car. Was sitting in the car for breaks at p/t job with the heat on. Result, one fucked battery!!

It is too cold currently to sit in a car without heating! Especially when one of you is a child!

Whatever decisions they’ve made to get themselves into the situation where they are using a shoddy system and they aren’t flexible when it glitches - those are still their decisions that mean they are providing a substandard service that doesn’t provide what parents need.

I've worked in two schools that started at 9! Someone called Ofsted.

It’s common sense and also advice given by the AA

You did your best in the circumstances, a banana and fruit bar is filling; they don't get that much at a breakfast club anyway in terms of quantity. You were right to keep the car warm too.

It was mean not to let your child into school, I'd be livid.

Are you meaning to imply that the OP is lying?

I haven't worked in any schools but was a primary school parent for a good number of years and the doors of the school were unlocked at 8 45

I don't think you've answed OP why it wasn't possible to pop to a nearby shop or cafe as you had a good amount of time

Did you expect her to sit in the freezing cold?

It's. O different to her driving for an hour really.

I mean that I've worked in enough schools to know that some parents will turn up without paying, promise to pay later, and then never do.

School's can't afford to be feeding and looking after children for free.

They haven't got the time to keep chasing and chasing 30 odd families for their payments. So it's just a lot easier to say "no booking/payment, no attendance"

How hard is it to understand that there wasn’t necessarily a shop particularly nearby, and certainly not a cafe? OP also needed to be able to get off to work as soon as school opened, so in the cold weather yesterday I totally get why she decided to stay parked near the school and give her child the banana and bar. A local newsagent wouldn’t have offered anything better.

Given that she had an hour it's quite hard to imagine that there wasn't anywhere to go, are there many primary schools 30 minutes drive from a source of breakfast?
Even if the newsagent had exactly the same things on offer it would have meant the OP was able to replace her own snacks

Same @fanaticalfairy. Bottle of water and rice cakes - crisps - cereal bars

got caught out years ago with dd a toddler coming home from a friends and crash on m25 and had to delays for think 60/90m

i had a few breadsticks so dd was ok but from then I kept a small pouch of stuff that doesn’t go off incase

Our parent pay app went down after charging triple for any purchases. I got a call to say my girl had no money left in hers- I knew this was wrong as I’d topped up the usual amount for the Monday and by Wednesday it was at zero. They still gave my daughter lunch. If they had space I think that it’s unreasonable of the school to turn her away for an error outwith your control.

You seem to have missed the bit about them using a notoriously shoddy payment system.

Our school wouldn’t have turned you away - they would have added her to the list and charged retrospectively.

Im the manager of our breakfast club. Even at full capacity we would never turn anyone away . We have a few parents that often forget to book and all are welcome.
We run from 7:45 until 8:30.
If children turn up at the start of the school day and tell us they're hungry because they've had no breakfast we also feed them .
No child should start their day hungry .
We offer 4 different types of cereal plus a gluten free option .
Yoghurts. Fresh fruit salad when available.
Bagels cinnamon and plain ,fruit loaf ,crumpets plus gluten free option ,toast,brioche ,croissants and pancakes.
We do beans with cheese on a Friday as an extra.
orange,apple,mango and cranberry juice.

You trying to drum up business or something?

My breakfast club would have emailed me to ask why the invoice hadn’t been paid. It is due the 1st of every month. I’m surprised yours didn’t do that. Then you would have checked and seen the error. Pretty poor to be fair.

Why are you laughing? A whole hour sitting in the car with a young child is incredulous.

Why didn’t you go to a nearby cafe or Spar and get her a decent breakfast in a warm place?

"Incredulous"?