What's going around has come knocking

Alex is home with what might be Strep. His doctor is totally booked up and says to keep him home for another day and see if white spots develop. GREAT. It wouldn't surprise me if it is strep because out of the 21 kids in his class, 9 are out sick. All most half. I have set up the sick ward with flannel sheets tucked into the couch cushions, a TV tray with water and other 7 year old essentials, and he has free rein over the TV and game stations.

We are not the type of parents who make our kid "prove" they are sick. At the first sign of yuck we generally keep him home. Maybe we are too generous with sick days but I would rather my kid be at home, then have to suffer at school sick. We all know those parents who send their kiddos to school with snot dripping out their noses and germs filling the air with every breath. In fact Alex's teacher last year, had her son in class a day after he was exposed to Chicken Pox (which she knew about!) and what do you know, Alex gets CP even with the vaccine. So we refuse to be those parents.

Which brings me to our love of private school. We loved having Alex in private schools because they were not mandated by the state on days of attendance and all other sorts of funding-based rules. Granted we still paid for those days when he wasn't in school, but it was our choice. Now that bugman is in public school, we have to fight the attendance lady yearly over days missed. We monitor how many days they mark as absent, how many are late arrival days (due to doctor's appointments) and how many days are unexcused absences. Last year she made 7 of Alex's medical days unexcused absences and they tried to threaten me with holding him back. I of course took it to the next level, the school district, and discovered that those days should have been medical days and she just didn't mark them as such. Which also brought about a school wide audit of the attendance. What a crappy fight that was. So now, I micromanage Alex's attendance with records of my own. Luckily his teacher is amazing and is understanding and we compare notes every other month. Which I guess makes me one of "those" parents, the high maintenance ones. But at least I get what I want!