I wanted to share my horrendous and traumatic experience with the principal, P S Khot, of New Horizon Gurukul school in Bangalore.
My son is in the first grade and goes for after-school football classes. He gets picked up at 3:30 to NHVM daycare(it is in another campus) and at 4:30 on football days. Last Monday(4th Aug 2014), the football class was not conducted but daycare or parents were not informed. My son went to the ground, started crying and ran back to the reception area where he luckily found the daycare kids(who were just leaving) and went with them. I called the school around 2:45pm on Tuesday and spoke to a lady called Netravathi. She wasn’t sure if classes would be conducted that day either. To my shock, she told me that ’what’s the big deal if he doesn’t get picked at 3:30? He can wait on the grounds and be picked up at 4:30! Imagine a child who is not even 6 years old being clueless on what needs to be done. This is a potential security issue, especially after the recent Vibgyor case in Bangalore.
Last afternoon I had the ’good luck’ to speak to the principal. I told him what happened(he wasn’t even aware that the classes were not conducted), but he kept on interrupting me and did not let me finish. He was very skillfully adding words to twist the story in his favor. It was so evident that he did not want to admit any lapse by the school. He continued to raise his voice and accused me of being an irresponsible parent and a liar. He also said that I didn’t know how to speak to the principal, whereas he was the one who was raising his voice and talking disrespectfully. He told me that if I have security concerns, then I should go to the police. He then threatened me by saying that he will speak with the chairman about expelling my child from the school.
I was really shaken by all this and told him that this is not how he speaks to a woman, especially a pregnant one(I am 6 months pregnant btw). I walked away as I didn’t want to be insulted further. I calmed myself down and then went back in 5 minutes to talk to him again but they did not let me speak with him. He was occupied with making an Independence Day video for the school, which he thought was higher priority than listening to a parent’s concern about security.
Ironically, the Vice Principal told me that this stress wasn’t good for my pregnancy. I told her firmly that I have concerns about the security(which causes stress!) and have come to speak to the principal and he wasn’t even listening to me.
This has been such a traumatic experience for me that I wanted to share it with everyone. I am still shocked at how a principal, who is of my father’s age, could behave like this. I wonder how he would react if the same thing happened to his grandson.