Bureaucracy Exposed!
This is something that bugged me the last time Morgan changed schools. You get a sheaf of forms from the new school, in which you need to enter all kinds of information. Name, who does the child live with, address (so far so good), phone numbers, emergency contacts, alternate people to contact if they can't contact me or Ash (that would be nobody, btw, how pathetic are we! More on that further down, though).
"Why are you bugged by this?," you ask. "It's all good information for a school to have."
You are correct, and thanks for asking!
It bugs me because every school he's ever been to has exactly the same information. His kindergarden school has it. When we moved him to a new school, they asked the exact same question (sometimes on the exact same form! More on that later.) When he hit first grade, same questions. When they moved him this time, same questions.
Why not just have a group of standard school district forms and send them on to a new school? The information hasn't changed. If it had, they could just ask before they forward the information. "Excuse me Mr. Shaffer, has any of the personal information we have on your family changed?"
"No."
"Right, then we'll just forward copies of it to the new school."
"Great! Thanks!"
Nope. Well, we know its the same information, but we just need you to fill it out all over again.
"Why?"
"If you could just fill it out."
"Sigh."
Hmm. What else? Oh yeah, we have no backup person in case the school can't call me or Ash. Well, all our friends are in New Hampshire or Maine. All our family is in New Hampshire, Maine, Houston or San Antonio, so who are you going to call? Why don't we have friends here? Because we can't get out! We have a son with autism and we can't get a babysitter for him to have a nice night out and meet people! Shut up!
Anyway, that was a concrete example of bureaucracy and why I hate it.