Working my way through the system one byte at a time

My eldest daughter begins high school next week.  We She is going from the private sector into the public sector and so far it has been quite the challenge.  We began this journey last school year when she had to choose a school.  Yes, you read that right.  She had to choose a school.  In this county there is a zoned school and then there are magnet schools, which in a easy way of explanation that means to me, schools for brighter kids.  Like all parents I claim to have a brighter child, and so I attended all of the magnet school meetings in order to pick the best program and school for my daughter.  Before that process could begin, however, I had to go to the school board and register her.  By doing this I received a user name and password that would let me into the school's secret page on it's website. 

After we attended all the meetings, we had to narrow down our search to choices, preferably three.  We were told hundreds of times how hard it is to get into these programs (an indication to me that the zoned system is a tad flawed) and that we should rank our choices in the order of importance.  The program we actually chose as our first choice was one that had entrance requirements.  This program was at two different schools quite far away from where we live.  Madison shadowed at one of the schools, but before we could shadow the second school the school board met and decided they needed to open this program in a third school.  Low and behold we lucked out and the program was started at our zoned school.  What this means is that she will be in an area with only the kids in this program, thrown into the traditional population for only her elective.  She shadowed the school, liked it just fine, and we put it down as our first choice via the school's website where I used my user name and password to enter, not the secret site, but the student reservation site, and she got in.  But not before I had several unsuccessful attempts to get in, had to march back to the school board and get my password changed, had several more unsuccessful attempts, which turned out to be the website's problems, and finally got in two days before the deadline ended.

Next we had to register her for classes at the school.  The guidance counselor made her way through all of the middle schools to aid in this, but because we were in the private sector we had to make our own arrangements.  Not difficult for me as I am a SAHM, but quite difficult for working parents as the school runs on school hours for the most part.  I emailed the counselor, set up an appointment, met with her, and filled out mounds of paperwork with several different women seated at various different desks situated around many different turns and twisting corners of the building.  When that was done I breathed a sigh of relief and got back to the task of finishing 8th grade.

That lasted a few days before we had to attend an orientation of the program where they told us more and more about the program, introduced us to the teachers, got the students to mingle, and served us cake, which kicked them up a notch in my book.  We were given more mounds of paperwork to read and fill out, and I promptly came home and put it in an area of my desk where I intended to view it, but where it instead collected dust all summer long.

Last week the bus schedule came on a yellow card in the mail.  It told us where to go and what time the bus would arrive.  I also read in the paper that the website had been revamped.  Hallelujah!  Because that website, for lack of a better word, sucked.  A few days later I was told via other parents that Madison's schedule was on the secret parent site within the website.  Yesterday I went on the revamped website and attempted to log in.  I logged in once and an error message informed me that after 5 unsuccessful attempts of trying to log in I was shut out of the system and could not try again for two hours.  Huh?  One equals five?  I ignored it, tried again, got the same message, said screw it and left my computer.  Last night I tried again.  This time I actually attempted it five times before the message appeared and I was kicked out of the system.  Two hours later I tried again, this time on my Ipad, and instead of it going to the secret site to tell me I sucked as a logger inner, it said it was down "due to maintenance".  Damn skippy it needed some maintenance.  I felt much relief as this was not a problem due to user fault and I went to bed.

This morning I sat down with the Ipad, said a little prayer, and logged in successfully.  I was now in the secret site within the school website.  I was finally in the public sector getting use of the tax money I've paid all these years.  I perused the site some more and saw that a new palm scanning system was going to be used for paying for lunches.  I would need to sign up for this, put money in the account, and to do so would need my child's ten digit secret student ID.  I looked around on the site and saw a link that said "student".  Figuring this is where I would find the student ID number, as it wasn't with any of the paperwork I had, I clicked on it.  It took me to a site full of student information headings such as address, school, classes, and ID number, but instead of her name and information under these headings, it said, "no student listed".  You can probably imagine my panic.

I tried and tried over and over to find her in the system.  I know now this crappy revamped site and how to maneuver through it with my eyes closed, but there was no Madison.  Somewhere in the notes I had jotted down last night was a phone number and I dialed it for help.  Of course the lines were busy, and of course I waited for over twenty minutes with an automated voice telling me how important my call was to all of the workers who were sitting at their desks assisting people with this crappy website and taking money out of the pockets of teachers in order to do so.  Eventually I got the voice of a human who sounded as if she were 95 years old and quite frail.  I pictured a little white haired lady in her nursing home wheelchair sitting at one of those hospital wheely trays that fit under the bed with an old rotatory phone on it ready to assist me.  I wanted to start ranting and raving, but because I had this picture of her in my head, I tried to keep it simple.  I told her my problem, and in between the phone breaking up (something that is happening now on my end), she informed me that because my daughter had never attended public school before she couldn't be linked to my account until she did.  Huh?  Does that make any sense at all?  She is registered, accepted, and enrolled, but until she attends she isn't in the computer system?  What she will magically appear the first day she enters the building?  Are there people sitting at the computer just waiting for her to cross the threshold so that they can then hit a button that allows her into the county's website?  Ridiculous!

I explained that I needed her student ID so that I could get her enrolled in this palm scanning system, put money into her account, and the little old lady said, "What dear?  Palm scanning?  What?"  I explained the system to her as simply as I could, and somewhere something I said caused a bell to ding in her head and she told me she would gladly look up my daughter' number (whew apparently she does have one of those), but that the system was currently down and thus she would be unable to assist me in this matter.  Her suggestion was to call the school to get that number, but perhaps today wasn't a good day for that, it being the first day of school for teachers and administration.

So I sat looking at the county website and pictured my tax dollars burning into pieces and floating through the air.  Then I popped on over to the actual school's website just for a change of pace to and to see if they had any new information, and was instantly reminded, in huge lettering, that my daughter school's name is the Packers.  Just to rub salt into an open wound...