I am furious! I guess the public schools don't have any room for student athletes that have to go outside of the school property. If you a reader or this blog you know Johnny is young athlete currently in middle school. He plays soccer at a very high level. In the US school soccer basically means nothing. Excelling means club soccer, ODP, and getting into the USSF Academy program. Johnny has all of these going for him.

Johnny was invited through his academy team to go to Guadalajara, Mexico for four days to play against some of the top Mexican academy teams. He had to take two of those days of those days off from school to attend. His team directors send out letters to the school to let them know about the trip, what it will mean to the kids in terms of developing as a person and a player, etc. The response… wait for it… unexcused absence. We sent him anyway. Right after the trip we got an automated message from the school saying his absence was unexcused, and we may have to go to court. Are you kidding me?!!! A week later we got the "official" county letter putting us on notice.

I called the principal to try to come to an understanding. He basically said sorry can't do anything. I explained the trip and what it means for Johnny's future/growth. I told him he's never in trouble, straight A student, etc… Nothing, he wouldn't budge. He said he completely understood the situation and there are many student athletes that are in the same situation. He even said that if his kid had this opportunity he would send him… So I asked him how the other student athletes deal with this. The response was he didn't know. What was interesting was he kept saying "I can't police everything"… So I said to him, "What I'm hearing is I basically need to game this system." He said, "..well, you didn't hear me say that…"

So there you have it we as parents are forced to lie to manipulate the system so our kids can experience the world outside of school. I'm disgusted. Sure the schools have truancy issues they need to deal with. Sure every kids in a seat means more money to the school. but geez – get real here. Johnny's not hanging out at the corner during school hours. He gets great grades and is never a problem. Come on people.

I wonder what they would say if little Johnny had to go to Japan for a week to play for the little league world series… Sorry you're SOL…

What do you guys think? Leave a comment or hop over to the forum.

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