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Parents Get a Bill for Kids’ Detention
If your kids are troublemakers, it could one day hit you in the pocketbook. And we’re not talking bail. A New Jersey school has announced plans to charge parents a fee for keeping their kids after school in detention.
The fee would cover the cost of paying a teacher for the after school time, but parents are angry that the district is adding to their financial woes.
Isn’t that part and parcel of school discipline, they ask?
The school district insists this isn’t a revenue source. It’s a means to cut down on discipline problems – if parents are paying, they might actually step up to help out with keeping their kids OUT of detention.
But as a lot of parents pointed out in a recent debate over whether schools should charge parents late fees for showing up late for pick-up, it could just as easily become a crutch for the parents who are already creating the problem. If their kids are habitual offenders, it’s often because Mom and Dad aren’t getting involved in discipline.
If they know they can pay for it, it would stand to reason they’d be that much more willing to write it off. Now there’s not even a guilt over having a teacher stay after with their kids – after all, they’re paying her for it.
But it’s one of those iffy cases. Kids likewise act out during family trauma – and that can mean during a time when the family is going through extreme financial hardship which is much more common in today’s economy. Having to rearrange your schedule to pick a child up from after-school detention can be hard enough on a family – and enough of a wake up call.
And some folks told CBS News detention is doled out for petty crimes in the Nutley school district – something as simple as losing an ID.
Does this seem fair to you?
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2 Comments
cavale commented on Nov 23 09 at 1:51 pmgiving parents a better reason to be angry at their kids for misbehaving is NOT going to make them better parents or disciplinarians.
anon commented on Nov 25 09 at 12:29 amthis is idiotic on the schools part. When I was in school I had a mother who could care less and a father you would beat the crap out of me if I got a B, let alone a detention. The only thing this would do is give abusive parents more fodder. Also, my school didn’t allow a student to graduate if they owed any money (for books, library fines, charging lunch, etc.) so if anyones parents were like my mother, they could be pretty good students, but if they got one detention, they could potentially not graduate because their parent wouldn’t pay and they couldn’t find the money because they had no way to get money.
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