Permission Slips

This is something that’s got me totally riled. It’s a complex situation but I’ll boil it down to only the points necessary to understand the situation.

Student A’s Junior Prom is this weekend and it is being held at A’s school and is an official school event. A has invited Student B to the prom. B goes to a different school. A has a permission slip/agreement that says things like “I won’t cause trouble at the event”, “can be kicked out of the event for causing trouble” and other similar language. All of the rules mentioned are said to apply to both A and the guest, B. This permission slip/agreement has to be signed by A, A’s parent, B, B’s parent, and A’s principal. So far I’m totally o.k. with this. Everyone involved should sign and yes, the principal has the right to bar his own students and outsiders from an official school event.

But here’s the thing, the permission slip/agreement must also be signed by B’s school principal. In other words, the principal of school B has veto power over something that student B is doing on their own time and has nothing to do with the school that this second principal is responsible for!

Let’s take this out a step. If A wanted to invite someone from a school in another state (not unheard of) then the principal in the other state would have to sign the form. Why!? Student B’s principal doesn’t have to give permission for A to take B to a movie on a Saturday night, so why is this any different?

The bottom line: No principal should have the right to control what that student does, off school grounds and not on school time? That’s between the student and their parent. (Any attempts to set me straight are asked for and welcome but will be met with strong debate.)

14 Replies to “Permission Slips”

  1. Whoa. That’s a new one. I was with you up until B’s principal entered the picture. Sorry, can’t figure the rationale behind that requirement.

  2. Hm – another question has come up during secondary ranting here. What if B doesn’t go to school?

  3. A’s school’s rationale: Clearance from B’s principal that it’s ok or not ok for B to mix with students from A’s school based on knowledge of B’s behavior and/or activities (Ethnic or gang conflicts, drugs, etc.)

  4. But what if principal B has no knowledge of things at school A? Such as in the out-of-state situation.

  5. If it’s a problem at B’s school, even if it’s out of state, I wouldn’t want to spread the virus, so to speak…

  6. So should principal B have the right to basically ground someone they feel is a troublemaker?

  7. And what about the senior that wants to bring a college freshman? Should the dean of the college have to sign this permission slip? Or if the senior wants to bring someone who graduated last year and isn’t in school currently? (Both are the non-principal situation.)

  8. If B is in high school, that principal has to sign. If B has graduated but is still under 21, then no signature necessary.

  9. Wow, proms have gotten more complicated since I went 10 years ago. I don’t remember any permission slips!

  10. Holy smokes. And I was just worried about whether it’s a “date” if I let my 8th-grader go to a dance at another school…. Wow, very much more complicated, indeed.

  11. While looking at our flick’r stats, we saw that you used one of our pictures in a blog posting. We wish you had given credit to this picture. It was taken by a student. We share with our community the ways our pictures travel around the Internet and stress to kids how important attribution of other people’s property is.

  12. Sorry about that. I many cases people consider the link back to the flickr page as sufficient credit being given. Please let me know how you would like the imaged cited and I’ll happily update the post.

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