Gosh it’s interesting what happens when you try and negotiate with the Steiner School, they leave you hanging for days and then come back with a sweet invitation for you to willingly stich yourselves up.

We were asked to take some responsibility, so we did.  

We were asked not to publicise meetings held with school entities, so we didn’t.

We wound down our daily attentions to this site, devoted to Ethical Marketing Assistance.

We even delayed post-production on our latest video.

And then we remembered that we couldn’t just walk away because we’re immigrants and we’ve got trespass orders on us.  oops.  so we let the school entities know that as well.

What did they do?  They put 2 and 2 together and came up with 5.  We’ve just received a letter saying that the outcome of the whole ‘process’ (a great big argument between the dynasty, the weazel and the lackeys - you’d better believe it) is to invite us....wait for it,...to go to a mediated meeting.  Sounds good no?

This meeting is to arrive at the exact state of ‘closure’ that will allow the school to take off the trespass orders.  Gosh isn’t that kind of them.  

We need the trespass orders off, ergo we’ll do what we’re told and be the nice little victims we were supposed to be from the beginning because we’re poor little immigrants.  This passes for logic round here.  It’s the logic of bullies.

So, are we going for it?  

Look, we’ve already stuck our necks out a long long way, further apparently than anyone ever has before, because we DON’T LIKE BULLYING.  No other family in the whole history of the school has ever been chucked out apparently.  So we’re already kind of famous aren’t we.

Ok, let’s think this through for a minute.  We didn’t like it when our daughter was bullied, so we complained.  Then we were chucked out for complaining.  We didn’t like being bullied like that AT ALL, and so we fought back, building this website.  “I think your website is great.  Keep up the good work” - that was the feedback we got from a school parent at the same time as the 2 plus 2 letter this evening.  Shucks.

So what on earth does anyone think is going to be our response to being bullied AGAIN by being asked to mediate our own stitch-up just so we can stay in the country?  That’s right - something bigger, something different, something uncomfortable, something that sheds an even brighter light into into all those corrupt smelly dark places, something else that says NO to bullying.

So far we have not done much.  Just built a little website and loaded it up with facts.   Those who really read the facts and understand the chronology of what happened only really come to one conclusion.  The school has bullied us, and our children really badly

So what are our options now?  Well there’s legal process....we might be able to find representation.  That takes a long time, but we’re pretty confident and if we win there, it would be very expensive, embarrassing and generally a bit sordid for the whole “community”.

Or there’s the media.  We were asked, (well threatened a bit actually) not to go to the press or the media when we were first kicked out.  And we didn’t.  We just put up a site (with real facts!), to try and communicate with the parents, who are being fed a load of twaddle about us by management (obviously).  Lot’s of those parents got cross with us for suggesting that the ‘community’ is not democratic etc., but I can tell you that not one of those complacent types of parent has bothered to check if my 9 year old can get to sleep at night....their kids are ok so why don’t we just ......off?

Other parents, who have understood what has happened to us, are writing to let us know that they support us and think that the school’s behaviour is appalling.  But they don’t really know what to do.  The school is run in such a secretive, manipulative way that talk hardly ever turns to action, so they don’t want to be too visible because - guess what, we were and we got KICKED OUT!  (food for thought there if you fancy keeping your children at the school).

But now the school want to bully us again because we’re immigrants and our NO is going to have to get a lot louder, loud enough so that the complacency will slip enough to create the space for parents to say to the school. “If you keep bullying these people, there might not be a school for ME to send MY kids to - so stop”.

We haven’t promoted our website at all, and yet I can tell you that there have been 776 visits to the site and that 8,483 pages have been viewed.  That’s in two weeks folks, with no promotion whatsoever and traffic is not slowing down. We were, but that was then.

So now might be a good time to start speaking up. (  :-)  ).

We’ve got our thinking caps on again.  Watch this space.