Fighting Society

it's happened, kiddo

"So, no school for a while?"

"Not for a little while, no bug."

"How long?"

Leah sighed, running her tongue along the lips as both she and her sister were laid across the living room floor, completing one of Jessica's new Lego sets together. She had just finished a half an hour-long phone call with the young girls school, which quite frankly, was a let down. Despite her clear point of Jess' routine being disturbed, and she was incredibly unlikely to even run, let alone act up again, the school were insisting that the young girl was a danger to herself, and others, refusing to even hear out Leah's side of the story, or even acknowledge the contextual issues.

~

Leah made her way from the kitchen, picking up her phone to whom the school was calling. They had already planned out the school calling her on Monday morning, discussing the next steps following Jess running away on Friday. It was the last thing the older woman wanted to do, knowing that they were likely to not even hear her out, but had to do it, none the less.

"Hi Miss Williamson, this is Mr Grant calling from Jessica's secondary school."

"Hello Mr Grant, what can I do for you?"

"I'm just calling to discuss Jessica, regarding her actions on Friday."

"Ah yes, I know what you mean."

"Without wasting any time, I'll skip right to the point. As you can imagine, Jessica absconding from school grounds put herself at an extreme amount of risk, to both herself and members of staff, with this being another time where she has placed another individual in harms way, now-"

"I apologise for being abrupt, Mr Grant, however it seems to me that you care more about your member of staff having a small girl, who physically cannot cause any form of harm, pushing past, then you do of one of your students being placed in such a position where they felt they had to run."

"I understand your concerns, however this is a serious incident, and Jessica's actions did place herself in harms way, due to her own decision of pushing past my employees who were only trying to keep her safe."

"Jessica did not decide to run, she did not choose to do so."

"Well, she made it out of school grounds, which we cannot allow to happen."

"Which, having heard of why, is due to your own staff members actions. Please, tell me Mr Grant, why your employee thought it be acceptable to tell my younger sister that I'd be disappointed in her, and that she's a let down?"

"Ah, Jessica told you that. You see, my staff-"

"There should be no reasoning for that. Your staff member should never have said that to any student, let alone to a vulnerable young girl who was clearly going to absorb such information, especially after everything that's happened."

"As a school, we are constantly alert at placing our students at the heart of our provision, and so we can understand your frustrations on this statement."

"I'm not frustrated, I'm outraged. Nobody should be speaking to anybody as if they were a disappointment, especially not a teacher to a student, and now you're calling me to tell me that my sister was in the wrong?"

"Having spoken to my staff, Miss Williamson, I've heard that it's Jessica's actions which have pushed them to react swiftly. She was rude to them, and made the decision herself to run away, after hearing the punishment's to her actions."