Request class switch? Wdid?!

amother

Fri, Feb 03 2023, 1:09 pm

Two of our kids joined a school this year that has a mix of kids from different lifestyles. It also has a number of classes so my understanding was that they tend to put together kids who are on the same wavelength. I explained at our intake that we were coming from a very Bais Yaakov background and a simple standard of living.

One kid is doing great. We could tell right away that she was fitting in perfectly with the others in her class. I got to know some of the parents outside of school and they seem to share our values.

The other kid I had concerns from the start but I didn't want to make any waves as a newcomer, she did have one friend in the class that she loved, she seemed OK at first and I told myself that this is where we'll learn to get along fine with people from different backgrounds.

I'm seriously regretting not looking into this harder at the beginning of the year. A few times little things came up that made me wonder but it was within the scope of normal elementary school struggles (mean kids, I hoped the teacher was handling it, my kid seemed OK) but it took until now for things to get to a point where I realized we have a problem. DD is not a very open expressive kid so I don't know exactly how much was bothering her until now.

She came back after winter break crying that apparently most of her class was on some group chat, and she was almost going to be ok with the fomo of being left out of the loop but on top of that kids were making fun of her for being out of it. She literally cried, and like I said this is not an expressive child, she usually holds her feelings in. Social media for kids is a huge red line in our family. The school has strict policies against it in the middle school but I guess they didn't think it was necessary in the younger grades? I'm sure kids break the rules in middle school too but at least the expectation is clear and my middle schooler for one does not have this going on in her peer group (and that child is expressive so I would definitely be hearing all about it). I am on a parent group chat for both my kids classes, as in previous years, and participate in parents facilitating things like get togethers and sharing pictures - but dd says this is something going on between the kids on their own devices without the parents. And it seems to be literally almost everyone.

I've scheduled a meeting with the principal to discuss my concerns but I'm not sure exactly what to hope to get out of it. Would it be overkill at this point in the year to ask to switch classes? Would it be too traumatic for my kid to have to make new friends all over again after having changed schools already at the beginning of the year, or is that the wrong worry when she's anyway having a hard time with this class (except the one best friend)? She's in a grade where they tend to switch things around before the next school year so when I had concerns at the beginning of the year I said let's give it a try, it's only one year anyway. But a lot can happen in a year and I feel like I made the wrong call. I should have been more assertive in the first place about getting both my kids into good groups. But what now? It's February...idk.