The following letter was sent to the school "instructor" and chronicles the complete story.
Our children will not be present at the your dance recital nor will they ever attend dance again under your direction, as we do not feel comfortable having them influenced in any way by an individual that would say, in their presence no less, that they are the type of children who will become pregnant and drop out of school. We feel that any lack of performance by our children in dance was a result of the instructors inability to teach, and we also feel that that a stable person would not respond in this manner (i.E. Stating that our kids will be the kind of kids who get pregnant and drop out of school because one of them did not perform well in a particular dance session). We will not defend our children or ourselves as we feel a defense is not warranted, but we will say that we are both busy parents with four kids and we do our best to support all of them. However, their inclusion in dance was intended to be fun for them and is last on our list of great things to which to commit, following more important things like God, family, education, gymnastics, basketball, baseball, volleyball, playing, growing, TV watching, paint sniffing, etc.
Additionally, we have stood by and watched the maltreatment of children and parents (customers to most business owners) for too long. We have witnessed: yelling (at children, a daily occurrence), physical abuse (a child being forced hard to the ground after her foot was lifted into the air by the instructor because the instructor thought her shoe was too small), immature instructor behavior (throwing of objects to complete instructor tantrums, again a daily occurrence), the exclusion of ethnic children and their families, and finally, our recent experience with an egregious case of verbal abuse (in fact, my daughter still cries when she thinks of you yelling, pointing, and spitting in her mothers face about how she, a 7 year-old, and her sister, a 5 year-old, will become pregnant and drop out of school because she did poorly in dance that particular day). Thank you for helping to make our decision facile.
I am sorry that you hold contempt for our payment method (post-dated check). We, however, will not apologize that that we have both been in college for the past six years, with 3 children, studying worthwhile subjects and have over $90,000 in combined student debt. Masters degrees, in worthwhile career paths, are not easy to come by (after all, Materials Engineering is not "Dance"). We are happy to say that those endeavors are beginning to pay off. Please check your publicly posted, customer empowering, debt list and notice that our balance is one of few at zero.in fact, I think you owe us $7.00. I guess we do actually pay our bill. We will begin posting your debt throughout town and will be sure to include the $260 in overdraft fees that were a direct result of your early deposit of our post-dated check. Check the billboards at the local businesses, the internet, and the newspaper for your current balance. And, no, we are not embarrassed that we post-date checks to comply with our budget after my wifes six-weak, unpaid child leave. We would, however, be embarrassed to take customer money for a job we did not perform.
Your contention that our kid was in an advanced class and should've been in a "fun" class if she wanted only to have fun, is ludicrous. She was placed by you, without consultation, in that class.
At this point, we do not completely understand for what services we ever paid. Recitals were unorganized and painful to watch (ask anyone whos ever seen a recital at Pioneer Village). Very few of the kids under 15 new an entire dance (at their parents fault Im sure), and those leading recitals were ridiculous to deal with (authority hunger).
Do not bother responding, as any further personal communication from you will not be read, listened, or responded to. You no longer exist to us personally, and we will do our best to purge any recollection of you from our childrens minds. We wish to have no further communication with you or any who represent you, other than those communications absolutely required by our professional positions within the community.in this regard, you can count on us acting professionally at our jobs, however, further attempts at personal communication, especially with or in regard to our children, will warrant legal action. Also please note that your actions and this and any further communications will be made public through all available channels and every attempt will be made to discourage others from subjecting their children to your abuse.
Should our kids actually become pregnant and drop out of school, as you have prognosticated, we will be disappointed, but always supportive, however, should they ever aspire to be a dance instructor that conducts themselves, to anyone (customers included), in the manner in which you have, we will disown them entirely. And I can state with great confidence that when our girls are older and they look back at your actions and why they were not allowed to continue with dance, they will have learned an important lesson and will understand why they are better people than you will have ever dreamed to be. Thanks, ultimately, for teaching them something how not to act.
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