Dealing with skids' school and seething

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I had posted the other day on blended families some of the background with my fiancé's ex wife. One of the boundaries set is that since they are divorced and have the kids 50/50 physical custody, the school will need to handle school matters directly with each parent. This eliminates the need for his ex wife to e-mail him concerning school matters. Same with daycare. Basically anything sent to one parent should be also sent to the other parent.

Yesterday, ss5 had an issue at school (yesterday was BM's day), that will need follow up while FI has him this weekend. We attended a school function last night and this was how FI found out about it. Ss5's teacher said "I e-mailed your wife." FI corrected the teacher, stated that they are divorced and reminded her that he had sent the teacher two previous e-mails requesting that all e-mails be sent to both him and BM directly. Teacher's response was "I'm not doing extra work because you and your son's mother can't cooperate." now, no one's asking this teacher to do anything but add FI's e-mail address to the "send to" line. She can send the exact same e-mail, not type it twice. I couldn't help but respond to her that we are all cooperative, and perhaps she should find a way to cooperate as well. FI has e-mailed the principal, surely the school has more than one kid with divorced parents.

It is a fact of life isn't

It is a fact of life isn't it? She can even make a mini-category/list of two parents and once created just click on it once.

Exactly. We went so far as to

Exactly. We went so far as to explain that even though everyone is amicable, we feel it's best for everyone involved if all information is handed down from the source at once. Both FI and BM travel for work. I could understand the teacher fussing if we're asking her to rearrange her whole system, but we aren't.

Exactly. The school has also

Exactly. The school has also known since the beginning of the previous school year that they are divorced. Both parents' information is listed on all forms, so it's easy to verify that FI isn't barred from having access. I understand that in the past BM dealt with the school and relayed the information to DH. In the past, they were married and lived together. Things change.

I was furious that she

I was furious that she actually said we all need to get along. Um, we're amicable, no one's not being civil. Now, she can make time to sit with us in the principal's office so she can hear the whole saga. Oh well, we tried to spare her and now she'll be spending more time on it than she would have to just e-mail both.

Sounds like maybe some

Sounds like maybe some divorced Parents do ask the School to rearrange their whole system to cater to their particular needs so I think she was taking her general frustration out on you. That is not right thing to do but I have 3 friends who are Teachers and they have quite a time trying to sort through all of the family issues, special requests, etc. School Administrators, in a futile quest to please everyone asks an awful lot of Teachers well beyond teaching.

Your Request, as you stated, was very basic and was a matter of putting another name on the Email. Her reaction was totally unnecessary so that's why I'm thinking either she's a B(tch or she's just fed up trying to accommodate so many Parents. You are right that there's more than 1 divorced child in the class-probably lots so imagine how many various requests in communication teachers are being asked to keep up with.

I believe you handled it properly, being probably the minority of a family who IS amicable. Hopefully in discussion with Principle she will accommodate your request (and apologize for being so nasty).

Oh I'm sure there are plenty

Oh I'm sure there are plenty of parents who think they're the only ones the teacher needs to deal with and then still more parents who think their kid is the only student in the place. I've worked in the school system and I do feel her pain as far as going above and beyond what's in the classroom. That's why when FI and I discussed how to not have BM be the designated spokesperson (mainly because she withholds information and then bombards FI with it daily for a week straight and we needed to eliminate her as the middle man and set a boundary), we figured that if her system is to communicate entirely by e-mail, then why not just e-mail FI directly as well?

I'm willing to hear her thoughts as to what might work better, but she needs to respect that just like in her classroom, there are boundaries here. Ultimately what we want to avoid is a situation where one kid does something that she needs a parent to address, she has far better odds of that happening if she e-mails both directly, as we don't expect her to keep the custody schedule straight.

We haven't nailed down how

We haven't nailed down how we'll all handle conferences but it's looking like BM, FI and myself will all go to one appointment so the teachers don't have to tie up multiple spots for one kid. We really are trying to not force anyone to shake up their entire system for us. When we went to open house the form in her classroom had slots for two emails, why ask for two if it's such a hassle to enter them both?

This is a good plan your

This is a good plan your skids Teacher has so that each Parent get the info at same time. More work for her and she did confuse ya but heck, she tried. Lol I'd go with my Ex to daughters conferences and it was okay. Small town so she had some of our same teachers, Lol. Made it easy since in the earliest years we were both just getting out of HS ourselves! People knew our set up and that we were friends too so we managed okay with school stuff. Granted that was years ago (daughter is 22 now) and simpler times. Things are more complicated nowadays in School systems.

As for my SS8, going with DH was a disaster. BM is flaky and shows up sometimes, sometimes not. This was an occasion of her not coming so DH asked me to go and it was first one of a new school year. Well the Teachers kept addressing me as his Mom and giving me stuff to give to "his Father". His "father" was standing right there beside me. Here's the joke: DH is snow white. I'm bi-racial. SS8 is black & is not my Husband's biological child. Oy right! Lol School assumed SS8 was mine & that DH was just a boyfriend or something. It was quite awkward to explain I'm the StepMom, DH was the acting Father and Mom wasn't there at all. Needless to say, I never went to another one. Lol DH going alone was just as confusing to them though as SS8 is very dark-skinned so then they assume he was adopted & share stories of adoption and such as if it's a given. Freaking nuts...

It's amazing what people will

It's amazing what people will assume. In our case I was introduced at open house as the fiancée, and again at the function last night. I realize the school year just started and it takes a while to remember who's who. Teacher didn't mistake me for being the BM, and knew my FI just said "this is my FI" yet said "I e mailed your wife." ugh. I'm willing to assume she meant to say ex wife and it didn't happen that way.