Have the school done the right thing even though it punishes the wrong set of people ?

[Mumof3bringwine]

DC is in year 6 and as I am sure everyone with a child in the same year is aware the leavers celebrations are in full swing.
The leavers hoodies were organised by the class parent rep.
The hoodies were handed out a while ago and the children have been proudly wearing them 2 days a week in school and were due to wear them for their residential.
unfortunately the Rep has purposely left 1 child without a hoody and also did not include their name on everyone else’s hoody.
I am not sure why it has only been bought to the attention of the school now, but they sent an email basically saying due to one child’s name not being on the hoody they are now banned from being worn on the school premises. Some very angry parents who think the school are punishing the children for something not in their control.
I am not sure what else the school could of done ? I believe they made the right decision but I seem to be the minority!

Wow, it's one thing to not order a hoodie for a particular child if the parents don't want to pay or have an argument about payment, it's quite another thing to erase that child's existence from the class for everyone else on their leavers hoodies. Especially bad if only one child is excluded.

When my child was in year 6 there was a boy who'd only joined for the final term, his name was on the hoodie despite the fact that - unsurprisingly - he didn't order one. Leaving someone off who's been in the class for years presumably is just plain bullying. Good on the school for banning examples of such bullying.

why snobby? Because I am pointing out that YOU want emails, other parents do not want to communicate their email address, or do not want them flooded by class info, other parents want Facebook groups...

Whatsapp is a perfectly normal and accepted mean of communication.

Once your child leaves primary you may well realise this.
get off your high horse, since when you being precious about emails means the rest is "a clique".

Yes the statement from school clearly reads the reason for the removal of hoodies at school was due to the name removal not the physical jumper .

WhatsApp groups are the devil, the school have given the parents more warnings other WhatsApp behaviours than they have had to tell the kids off for playground squabbles.

The payment is a total red herring. The issue is that this parent has taken it upon herself to erase the existence of a child in the class from what is a form of public record of the leavers class.

Imagine how that child must feel seeing those hoodies? It must be so distressing to that child, especially if they've been in that class for years. I don't care whatever disagreement there is between parents, you just don't do something so hideously cruel to a child.

whatsapp groups can be muted, that's the beauty of them.

And funnily enough, it's always parents complaining about the drama who ARE the drama!

Year 6 are not full swing in celebrations. They are working hard as normal and will continue to do so til they leave. We do do not write off 2 months of learning time!

when was doing the year 6 organising I was working a full time job. I did it all in my evenings and weekends for free. You got the communication in a manner that worked for me, sending it out at whatever time worked for me. Or the children didn’t get a yearbook or a hoodie at all as there would be no one to do it. I wasn’t there just to serve all the people who couldn’t be bothered. I was doing it for the kids. This is why i did it for both my children in when year 6 and then I said never again! No snobby cliques but just overworked mums who wanted to give the kids a good send off

of course it is - or it may be those parents who are constantly being bullied by parents who think they are gods gifts.

oh and it is drama and I don’t even comment in there so it is not me causing the drama - it is the same 3 parents over and over who belittle everyone else.

Doing it for the kids but If a parent wasn’t available to comminute when you were … didn’t get a year book

I'm actually pretty sure that in my child's class, if one child had been left off the hoodies then the other children wouldn't have wanted to wear the hoodies as, by year 6, they had the empathy to consider how shitty it would make them feel if the tables were turned. And they cared more about their classmates wellbeing and their friendships. Even for the children who they weren't particularly friends with I think they'd do this, because they'd realise that deliberately wearing such a hoody with one name only missing would be a cruel act.

Sounds like in this case at first no-one noticed, but now they have I can't imagine children wanting to be so deliberately exclusionary to a classmate.

I’m not exactly rolling in money, nor do I enjoy waste. Oh and I also hate any kind of school raffle, parent pressured money making scheme…However, I would be willing to pay for another hoodie to be done for the child’s name to be included.

Why on earth did they decide to leave one child out? That’s horrendous and it’s the type of thing that will likely really bug a child of that age.

If it were my own child left off the hoodie then there would be war.

what? Every child got a yearbook and hoodie - of course they did. We wouldn’t have left a child off like in the OP’s case. We’d have estimated a size for the hoodie and asked the teacher for the name if we hadn’t had a response from the parent. The yearbook we asked for photos from everyone so their child would have featured in many of them but they would have missed the opportunity to submit their own photos. Like I said, it was a lot of work managing all this for 60 children but we’d always put the children first even if a parent was difficult for any reason.

Sounds like you’re the drama in yours.

oh you are one of those parents.

Not only refusing to lift a finger, but complaining about the way it's done, and then accusing those who give up their time to be "bullies who think they are gods gifts.*

To go back to the example I was discussing, if you think communications should be also done by emails, then do it yourself. It's easy. You take the Whatsapp info sent by one rep (you don't even have to create it, just copy and paste), you contact the school to have the email addresses of parents who accept or want to receive emails, and you send them the emails with the relevant info.
You receive the replies and you communicate them to the rep, via whatsapp or other.

Simple. See how it's done instead of moaning?

The problem is that some parents will complain about the communication, but will never offer to manage a different/ better way. So who think they are god gifts too important to deal with petty details like this? The rep working or the lazy parent?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the VAT 'issue' probably wouldn't have been so much of an issue if these parents didn't have their previous beef.

The mum who complained about the VAT was likely using it as an easy excuse to kick off and the rep/mum who removed the kid's name from the jumpers clearly did so as a dig at the mum without considering the wider implications.

Pretty pathetic on all counts tbh. School have likely done the right thing though, as shitty as it is for the rest of the kids.

But the child will know that no one else’s hoody has their name on, and the whole point of the hoody thing is that it is a record of the whole cohort, which means no ones name is missing.A bit like playing cards when one of the cards in the pack is missing, it defeats the purpose.

I actually do loads for the school so please do not assume - I just don’t need to air what I do on the what’s app group. The reason I don’t involve myself on there is because unless your 1 of 3 people 2 of which do nothing just want their choices then it’s not worth your time as you are ignored or disagreed with.
I pay anything needed to be paid on time, I do a lot for the school in general, typing on WhatsApp does not equate to any of those things.

Oh 100 percent as I said previously if it had been any other parent it would not have ended the way it did. I’m neither of their friends as in like close or spend any additional time with either but the parent who raised the vat thing did not do it in an aggressive rude way

saying this I am aware that she likely knew it would trigger rep.

My contribution was practical. I would help to prep for an event and clean up afterwards, as I knew the PTA committee were exhausted at that point. As a single parent I would have to bring my child and I always made sure they did their bit too. So I was bothered always. But the comments were interesting - their husbands did nothing but turn up at events and pay; the mums would comment how surprised they were that my child would happily sweep the floor of the hall (whilst theirs were just playing outside); others would do nothing (not criticise but not interested). A village takes all sorts. I did what I could do.

It’s tricky but the school should foot the bill to reorder the lot as they should have better overseen the design before it was printed. They are being fair in their current approach but it doesn’t really resolve the issue and ideally something still needs to be done to avoid such waste.

Why?

True. Some years we've done them like a list but they tend to choose the names inside the numbers of the year now.

I'm with you, OP. It was extremely petty of the class rep and tantamount to bullying. It's right that they're banned, unless they can first be remedied.

That is appalling behaviour by the rep. I can’t believe anyone’s trying to justify it. It would be one thing to decide that parent wasn’t paying for a jumper and not ordered them one, and another to completely remove that child’s name from the jumper. As if they never existed. What a nasty thing to do. That’s bullying and the school had no choice but to take the action they’ve taken and not facilitate the bullying being allowed to continue in school time. Wow.