School Answering Machine

There’s a video clip making the rounds on the Net about a supposed school answering machine.

The story goes like this: When administrators of the Maroochydore High School in Queensland, Australia, implemented a policy requiring students and parents to be responsible for attendance and homework, parents of children with failing grades sued. The staff of the school recorded this answering message as a response:

[YouTube Clip]

The video clip is going viral, perhaps it strikes a chord, but unfortunately, it’s a hoax. Old Internet hands will remember a similar clip circulating back in 2002 with a different school name, the Pacific Palisades High School.

Snopes said:

In 1998 the sole high school in the Palisades Charter Schools group, the 2,400-student Charter High School, instituted an attendance policy mandating that any student absent without a valid excuse ten or more days per semester be failed, regardless of his academic achievements. One of the results of this policy was that in February 2002 forty Palisades High teachers assigned a total of 130 failing grades to students whose classwork would otherwise have merited passing grades, because those students recorded absences and tardiness in excess of the school’s stated attendance policy.

After vociferous complaints (and threats of lawsuits) from parents who contended they were unaware of, or didn’t agree with, Palisades High’s attendance policy (even though every student and parent had been informed of it), LAUSD officials said the failing marks might have to be voided because the attendance policy was not submitted to and approved by the school board. Without board approval, the school must follow the policies of the LAUSD, which states that students must be graded on the work they do and attendance may not be used as a reason to fail
them.

The staff of the Pacific Palisades High School did make the answering machine recording though it was never put on the school’s system.

Still. It’s funny. Thanks alientango!