Private school dad refuses to include student in his son's math lessons; 'your son can't keep up.' AITA?
"AITA for refusing to include another child in my math instruction for my son?"
Secret_Birthday8452
My older son (12m) is very interested in math and has the aptitude to match. Not a huge surprise, as I was the same and went on to get advanced degrees in a quantitative field. Due to my wife's job, we relocated to a smaller town.
The public schools have become a mess since COVID, so we enrolled him in what is regarded as the academically strongest private school in the area. It's OK, but not nearly as good as the public school in our old home city.
We supplemented son's math with an online program last year, at which he excelled. Math at school was a total waste, but he could afford the lost time. But he has a lot of interests (music, coding, bouldering, baseball, etc) and now homework load is increasing.
Time is scarce and he can't double up on math using evening time. We asked the school if he could just use his math period to go to the library and get ahead on homework, but they refused (no one to supervise was the reason given).
And doing synchronous online math in the library won't work, because his schedule is "block" and the time of day he does math moves around. My office (I'm remote) is a 3 minute walk from the school (on purpose - picked for drop-off ease!), so I asked if I could take charge of his math education, in the library. School agreed.
My son asked if I would consider including one classmate, “Jane”. He vouched for her math skill, interest and work ethic. I asked her parents if I could review her assessment results and “evaluate” her myself.
She wasn’t quite up to where my son is, but close enough that I could make it work, and she seemed very hard-working and enthusiastic. So far, so good. A few weeks into this, I get a call from the school.
The parents of another student, “Joe”, are upset that he was not offered a chance to participate. My son’s sense was that Joe doesn’t like math especially and is poorly behaved.
I didn’t really want another kid, but I asked to see his assessments before I said no, because I assumed they’d show he wasn’t ready and I could decline on non-subjective grounds. His parents shared, and indeed he is just at grade level.
When I declined, his parents got quite upset. They called the school to complain about “favoritism.” They called and berated me, too; insisted that if I took “Jane” then I needed to take all comers; that I was discriminating against their child (we are all same race/religion).
I wouldn’t budge. They asked the school not to allow the accommodation for my son and Jane. I told the school that if I got anymore guff, my kid was just going to do online school (he was admitted to a very high-level online program, but decided to only take one evening computer science class).
The parents are badmouthing me to all who will listen. At first I was silent, but now I respond that “Joe” did not demonstrate aptitude for advanced math in my view and would not be able to keep up. So, AITA for refusing to include Joe? AITA for giving Joe’s lack of aptitude as a reason?
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's post:
PumpkinPowerful3292
NTA - What you created with the blessing of the school was an advanced math class in essence. Not every student can be expected to be academically suitable to join and it appears that Joe is in that category.
You cannot take all comers as to do would so would negatively impact the other students learning. It would no different if the school offered an advanced class, they wouldn't be able to take all comers in that class and neither should be expected to.
Secret_Birthday8452 (OP)
Yes, that is very sensible and the way I think. Didn't have the space in main comment to provide this context, but the school is generally opposed to "tracking" before 9th grade, so there really is not precedent in the middle school for tracked or "test-in" advanced classes.
One of the reasons I find the school kind of lame, but we don't have a lot of options in this area. Seriously hope to be able to move back to civilization before my kids start high school.
blueswan6
NTA But what might make more sense is that you take your son out of the school during this time. Teaching at the school and allowing another child to participate does open the school to criticism. If anything it's more on the school that they allowed this to start.
You're not an employee but you're at the school and using school resources to teach only certain kids. They should have either said no or started an advanced math class with guidelines on who could be placed and possibly made you a part-time employee. But it's private so I get that they can essentially allow what they want.
I would keep telling anyone who asks that it was for advanced kids and Joe didn't pass the skills test but also be prepared for a backup plan. You said you would just pull your son but it's not clear if your son would even want that.
Secret_Birthday8452 (OP)
He was very close to choosing to do the online school this academic year. My wife sort of pushed the other way (social reasons) and that tipped the balance. I did offer to just grab him and bring him over to my office, but it is a lot easier to just do it there (and basically infeasible to include Jane if we did it at my office). School was fine with it. They often let outside tutors/speech therapists, etc hired by parents come give services at the school.
blueswan6
Ah, well then I think that's different if other individuals are allowed. Might be worth having another discussion with the school on how they should respond like, "Joe" teaches his son and one other friend.
It's not a class and he's not able to teach additional students. But you can setup a tutor for your child during his math class if you want to pursue that. But obviously the school needs advanced classes. You should ask if they considering pursing that in the future.
Tell your son that you're only going to keep teaching him and Jane. If any others want in just tell them you can't teach more than the two that you are. If this keeps going into next year you might want to also consider dropping Jane and really just doing this for your child. Just less of a headache.