Well, this wasn't badly written at all....

[conuly]

"Please make sure that your child wears their school clothing on this day. We encourage all of our "little dolphins" to dress in school clothing every day If you need to reach out to us concerning this policy, please feel free to contact us.

On the reverse side of this letter is a list of wonderful WEBSITES your child may use at home to help them become better at Reading, Math and science. Please have your child go onto these sites. This will significantly increase their achievement in school."

(This whole letter is in italics, btw.)

Now, first of all, I don't think I need hype telling me that MORE SCREEN TIME is the answer to all that ails kids' grades. Nor do I really need people giving the easy solution to school achievement instead of one that might work just as well if, say, I were poor and didn't have easy access to a computer.

But besides that, wtf is with "If you need to reach out to us, please contact us"? Why not just say "Please contact us if this is a problem" so you don't sound jargony and redundant?

Sheesh.

Comments

[pne.livejournal.com]

I was wondering WTH was up with "reach out to us", too.

Why not just say "Please contact us if this is a problem"

or even "if you have any concerns (or comments) (about this policy)".

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

What do they mean, "wear their school clothing"? As opposed to what, their jammies? their dress-up clothes?

Telll you what; the parents who bring their kids in their jammies, dress-ups, velvet-and-lace party dresses or other inappropriate clothing are parents who have to go to work, and can't afford to have their day and their child's day start with a lot of screaming and crying. Whatever it takes to get the kid to school in a reasonably decent mood, they'll do.

I cared about weather-appropriate and playground-safe, but otherwise I'd let kids wear whatever they came in; why not? If that meant the party dresses got playground schmutz, so it goes: a little lesson for parents as to why party dresses are not appropriate school attire.

Heh, 'reach out to us'; I think these teachers are dreaming of going into Insurance.

[conuly]

Their uniforms, they're supposed to wear their uniforms. Except that everybody knows that you can't enforce a uniform in NYC schools anyway, so they resort to just asking a lot and hoping you'll forget they can't do anything about it.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Uniforms in public school? I'm assuming this is meant as a remedy for the class-warfare fashion-police competition that can get so vicious, but if it's not mandatory and enforceable, neither the Fashion Police nor the conformity-challenged will wear uniforms, so the mockery and jealousy will still go on.

[conuly]

Something like 85 or 90% of public elementary schools in NYC require uniforms and have for a decade now.

Honestly, from what I've seen, the kids mostly *do* wear their uniforms, except that now that it's winter some of them wear non-uniform shirts under their short-sleeved uniform shirts for warmth, or they wear jeans under skirts (or without skirts, or instead of their more formal pants) for the same reason.

Which leads me to think that it's not fashion or nonconformity (especially since the school doesn't yet go higher than the second grade) but plain old fashioned lack of cash behind anybody not wearing the uniform. If the school wants to put up the money to outfit the students, hey, I'll be the first in line, but....