HOUSTON, May 4 (UPI) — A Texas school district is investigating after a 7-year-old girl successfully used a forged note with spelling errors to get out of an after school program.
Charlie Dahu said he received a phone call Monday afternoon from a concerned neighbor who told him his daughter, Rosabella, was waiting outside of her family’s locked home when she was supposed to be attending an after school program at Sheldon Elementary in Houston.
The neighbor, Rolando Lozano, said the girl had come to his home and asked his wife if she could use the bathroom because her family’s house was locked and no one was home.
“She came to ask my wife to use the restroom and that’s when I figured there was something wrong,” Lozano told KTRK-TV.
Rosabella waited with the Lozanos while Dahu hurried home.
“I was shaking, I was scared, I was just glad to see her in good health and that nothing happened to her,” Dahu said.
Dahu said he discovered Rosabella had forged a note from her parents saying she was supposed to take the school bus home instead of attending the after school program.
The father said he was shocked that Rosabella’s note, which is in a child’s handwriting, was able to fool teachers.
“You can clearly see she did not even spell the word ‘bus’ right,” Dahu said.
Rosabella also used the wrong spelling of “to” in her note.
The note reads: “I want Rosabella to go too dus 131 today. To: Ms. Reign.”
The Sheldon Independent School District said it is investigating the incident.
The district released a statement saying:
“Sheldon ISD is currently investigating the situation. We are reviewing our training procedures to ensure that our after-school grant program staff is properly trained in dismissal procedures. As we move forward, the district is working to make sure that all of our after-school grant staff receives the same training as district employees. At this point, the district is continuing to investigate and will take proper disciplinary action. As always, student safety is our top priority.”
A 7-year-old girl in Des Moines, Iowa, had less success with note forgery in January when she went for a different tactic: trying to fool her parents with a fake note from the school. The note, signed “Cara G,” sought to convince the girl’s parents that the school had extended winter break for an extra week. The girl’s parents were not duped, and quickly noticed she had written “brake” instead of “break.”
Before my daughter attended them in the mid-90s, until the late 00’s (2007), I used to believe Public Schools weren’t that bad. Despite MY experience at Texas schools in Corpus Christi. TThe elementary school — Smith — and the High school — King High — weren’t bad. The Junior High, Shannon, was a cesspool, filled with violent, unhindered kids looking for fights, and at least one fourth of the teachers were average or worse. An English teacher I had in one grade would actually play card games with some of the girls during class. On the other hand, one teacher, a male Hispanic teacher, was punched, in the face, as a ritual, by an older chicano boy at the end of two different school years (If _I_ had been a teacher there, I would’ve had the same bad attitude). That was in the 70s. After being there (shift working dad, so I was there in the day time for school and other programs) for my daughter’s school experience, in Miisourie, I KNOW that public schools in America are the worst. My daughter and I experienced teachers who told her class NOT to tell their parents what went on in the classroom, a Principal who kept a file on me because I complained about bad teachers (two of them in elementary school, a math teacher who ridiculed my daughter (who was and is one of those rare, studious types) and then held her back (despite my daughter doing so well a high school teacher wondered why she was behind everyone else) when I wrote said teacher a note saying she shouldn’t berate ANY student, administrators who had to be told WHY they could not prevent kids from going to the bathroom when necessary (especially girls, who have reasons OTHER than urination and defecation for bathroom visits), textbooks that were outdated by 30 years in some instances, etc., etc.
I’m NOT surprised that this happened. The quality of teachers in Public schools has been going downhill fast, ever since the Reagan years, when government cut back funding for education and poured tons of money into defense, etc.