Bureaucracy FAIL

[unixronin]

I will never understand the reasoning that drives the local elementary school to send home field trip permission forms that not only require me to fill out anew for each field trip medical information that the school nurse's office already has on file, but also require me to fill out destination, date, time, and trip cost information from the front of the form TO ELSEWHERE ON THE FORM before returning the form to the school.  WTF is the POINT of the school requiring me to inform the school of data that the school has just proven to me that it already has?

The medical information, I can almost understand; some of it (the insurance, say) could have changed, and we could have forgotten to notify the school.  But even that section could be marked "Fill out this information if there has been a change" — then the teacher could just glance at that section and, if any of it is filled out, know the nurse's office needs to be informed of the change, and otherwise just go with what's on file.

But making me fill out the back of the form to tell the school information it just told me on the front of the form?  That's a ludicrous waste of everyone's time.  What are they going to do, accidentally send my kid on a field trip to a Titan missile silo in North Dakota by mistake instead of the Seacoast Science Center if I don't copy the information from the front to the back?

Comments

[skellington.livejournal.com]

Ah, but do you REALLY want a copy of your insurance information, which sometimes includes SSN as an identifier, to be left in a file in every teacher's desk?

ID theft by anyone with access to the school?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Ah, but do you REALLY want a copy of your insurance information, which sometimes includes SSN as an identifier

It doesn't. The only medical information on record is the insurance provider, insurance ID number (which is not SSN), primary care physician, and allergies (none known).

[wyrdling.livejournal.com]

...and that paperwork would probably get put in a file of "stuff to do when i get the time" and rediscovered by the teacher at the end of the year if they clean up their room at that point. the sheer quantity of paperwork given teachers to shuffle is frightening. you'd think they were clerks with not much else better to do.

well, eh, that was my experience as a first year teacher in the public schools last year...

thus, the appeal of having exactly what you need put right in front of you without having to keep and maintain another set of logs. (the redundancy, i don't get, we had that too. probably legalistic garbage the professional counsel decided on for a security blanket.)