After more than a year of shut down because of the pandemic Covid-19, and William had to attend on-line classes, now he can go back to school in person for summer school. He’s so excited!
Jefferson school is about 15 minutes away from our house, it’s not too far; but now that he’s old enough we decided to let him take the bus. A week ago I asked if he wants to take the bus to school, he said Yes.
Summer school starts from 8:00 AM – 12:15 PM. They will not serve breakfast and lunch, they will provide snacks to be eaten in the classroom only. For lunch they’ll pack it and we take the food home.
7:00 AM I texted Mr. C to make sure he knows that William is allergic to peanut. William has been with Mr. C since Nov last year but because it’s always online meetings so I wanted to make sure he’s aware of that. He replied back that William is not assigned to his class for summer, but he’d let his new teacher knows. “What’s William’s teacher name?” – I asked. “Mrs. Rodriguez” – he replied.
I woke him up around 7:00 AM: he asked for breaks as usual before brushing teeth. I told him about the school plan of not serving breakfast ,and that he has to finish breakfast before the school bus comes so that we won’t be late for the bus. He had a cup of milk and half cup of the cereal. We waited and waited but there was no sign of the bus. 10 minutes before 8:00 AM, I called the school and they said the bus was running late as it was the first day of the school, and they told us to be patient. 10 minutes pass 8:00 AM, I decided to take William to school by car.
By the time we arrived, there was only few students and their parents were there; I guess the rest already came to their classrooms. The lady took us to the office, she asked for his name and tried to find out who’s his teacher. We waited for about 10 minutes and his teacher came out to take William to classroom: William was so eager to go with her. I also gave William’s medicine to the lady, asking her to give it to the school nurse. I asked her why the bus did not come to pick up William; she gave me the school district transportation number to call.
So I called the number (714-558-5811), got the mail box, I left the message. 30 minutes later I called again, a lady picked up and said William is not in their list to pick up!
Feeling lost I called the school again (This is impossible because I did ask Mr. C to give us the transportation and he said OK), this time they gave me the transportation coordinator number (Mrs. Lisa 657-289-5919). I called, her mail box was full I could not leave a message. 20 minutes later I called again, this time she picked up; I told her that William was not in the bus pick up list. She said something about the transportation is not provided for home school student, which really confused me! Then she said she was driving, and that when she got to her computer she’d find out why William is not getting the transportation. So I waited for her call.
As I was driving to the Optometry, Mrs. Lisa called. She said for some reason William name was not there so she requested the transportation office to add his name in. This would take a few days so probably he won’t be able to ride the bus until next Monday!
Things never come easy to us, isn’t it? I took the day off today from work mainly to renew my passport, but it turned out I had to deal with the school bus issue.
On the way back from the Optometry, I stopped by at Costco to buy William a hot dog and churro for lunch, then drove directly to school. It was 11:30 AM, I was so early so I stood in the shade waiting for his class to over at 12:15 PM.
12:17 PM, I saw he was walking with his classmates and teacher toward the gate. He ran toward me when he saw me. He did not seem to be happy at all, so I asked if he liked his class, he said “Yes”. I gave him the lemonade and the hot dog to eat while on the way home, but he said “I’m full!” and refused to eat; but when I offered him churro, he took it right away.
1:30 PM, Mr. C called to say sorry; he just did not understand why he filled out the same paperwork for Williams as his classmates but all his classmates got the transportation but not him. The class roster also said he has transportation. So somehow the transportation office did not get the request for William’s transportation. I guess this is why we never get a call from them about the pick up time; the one question that I asked Mr. C twice “What time the buss will come to pick up William?”. Mr. C was surprised that I did not get any call from them. Now we knew why!
So his first day went well to him, I think. He asked why the bus did not come today. I told him the bus will pick up him next week; so this week we’d drive to school. He kept asking Why? I simply told him that we needed to register for the school bus to pick up; and that takes time. Poor little boy, he was so excited to take the bus today!