Insulting Voice Mail at Pacific Palisades High School–Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
The eRumor says that parents at Pacific Palisades High School in California are suing the school because students who were absent or didn’t complete their work got failing grades.
It also includes the alleged text of a school voice mail greeting that insults the parents.
The Truth:
This voice mail message never actually appeared on any high school voice mail system in Pacific Palisades, California, but the written version of it was created as a humorous and sarcastic response to an actual controversy at one of the schools.
In 2002 there was conflict between parents and school authorities at Pacific Palisades Charter High School over an attendance policy.
The school is a part of Palisades Charter Schools, which operate under the Los Angeles Unified School District, but independently.
The school tried to crack down on absences by deciding that any unexcused absences of ten or more days per tem would result in automatic failure for the student.
A result was that during the first term of 2002, more than a hundred students who had otherwise passing grades were flunked because of absences and tardies.
The parents cried foul.
They said they had not know about the policy and some threatened to take the issue to court.
Then the Los Angeles Unified School District got into the fray by saying that since the attendance policy had not been cleared with them, the failing grades would have to be set aside.
The school disagreed, saying it had the privilege of operating autonomously because of being a charter school.
In the midst of that, someone created the fictional answering machine message, which has circulated ever since as a monument of what teachers and administrators would like to be able to say to some parents.