School giving me hassle for doing the right thing!

[Target23]

So I had symptoms of COVID on Friday last week, booked a home test which came Tuesday and received the results on Thursday.

I had 2 calls from the school from 2 different receptionists saying that as soon as I receive my results my DC should come in. I received another call Thursday asking for the results before I received them and when I had received them I called them and let them know it was negative.

This was after lunch, I had a delivery booked for food which I struggled to get as I am on my own so I had nothing for packed lunches so I told them that DC will be in on Friday, they got really annoyed and said they should be coming in now. Again I explained the situation they told me that it would be an unauthorised absence and hung up the phone.

Their attendance is good but obviously with government guidelines I had no choice but to keep them off until my negative result.

I have just received a letter penalising me for keeping them off which threatened a penalty charge and a meeting with the head teacher.

They had Friday- Thursday off due to my symptoms and me being a single DM with no outside help and were back in Friday after I received my negative result after lunch on Thursday.

I still feel absolute awful and terribly sick so I would like advice from people not in this situation.

Should I send them an E-mail?

Or are they being fair?

I wonder if they are concerned because of the length of the timeline? I had symptoms too last Friday and ordered a home test. Came on Saturday, I posted it back later on Saturday and got the results Sunday. I wonder if they are being heavy handed because your dc had a lot more days off than other children with parents waiting for tests?

They are being very heavy handed about it.

I wonder though why you waited for a postal test? Was a walk-in or drive-through option not suitable? I only ask as you likely could have been tested Fri/Sat and had results back in time for Monday school starting.

It's a long time compared to a test done in a centre, we've had a couple so far and that was only a day off as results came back really quickly. Do you have concerns about using a test centre (as let's face it, this is likely to happen again before we're done!) or is there nowhere near you?

Test centre results: took 2 hours to book. Couldn't book until lunch time. Took 51 hours to come back.

Postal test. Ordered, arrived next day but only just in time to get it registered done and taken to the priority post box before the deadline. Results back two and a half days later. The last collection for postal tests is 3pm at the weekend. You are supposed to have the test in the post box by 2pm.

Also remember the op may be better suited to postal test due to her disability. Lot easier to cope with the difficulties of your disability at home.

Request to email instead of meeting as a reasonable adjustment for your disability or arrange for someone to accompany you.

Bloody stupid to invite sick parents in to meet anyway. Passing on a cough will result in the person catching it having to go through testing rigmarole when it could be avoided.

If they are querying it because of the length of time off because of the postal test then suggest that next time they give you one of their tests to speed things up. (That's why they have them, for vulnerable parents) If they'd done that in the first place the test would have been done on the first Friday and the kids would have been back to school for Monday/Tuesday.