Single mother of twins refuses to pay for overpriced commemorative shirts their school ordered without consent and handed to kids as gifts, leading half the PTA to join her

• AIO for refusing to pay for Commemorative Shirts I never ordered?

• Aesient

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• I have twins (12 years old) in their final year of Primary/Elementary school. Their class designed commemorative shirts, as previous classes had, and their school ordered them.

• The issue I’m having is that parents were not given order forms (previous years they had so the parents knew what the shirts looked like, the cost and what size/how many they wanted, prior to the shirts being ordered), the kids just showed up after school one day (half way through their final year) wearing the shirts saying “our teacher told us these are for being good in class”, and the following night an invoice for the shirts were sent to the parents. The cost of the shirts are 2.4 times the price of a regular school uniform shirt.

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• I refused to pay. Told the school I had no order form/purchase agreement with them and the way the kids were given the shirts insinuated it was a gift. However my kids want to keep them (but not wear them, as the texture is horrible) as the shirts have their/their classmates names listed on them. I offered to use a Cricut to put the names on the back of a regular school shirt for them, which they agreed to, but were upset that a “gift from their teacher” might be taken off them.

• I showed the shirts at a P&C/PTA meeting and the parents were horrified at the quality, cost, process and the fact part of the writing was illegible (pale yellow writing on a white background). Half of those parents had been through the process before (with order forms and communication surrounding the design) and their shirts had cost much less with better quality material.

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• The principal and class teacher blamed the whole situation on other staff members/Admin telling me “it was their job to ensure order forms went out”, and refused to accept any accountability for not following up that the process had been followed before handing the kids the shirts. I asked how they could order shirts without knowing what sizes the kids needed and they said they had the kids pick their own sizes (previous years the parents selected the size on the order forms).

• I’m a single parent (their other parent took off over 11 years ago and dodges paying child support) and cannot afford over $120 for 2 shirts that won’t be worn along with an expected $1200+ annual class camp occurring in 3 months (I knew and budgeted for the camp, if I had an order form I would have budgeted for the shirts as well). The school told me “well you have the shirts, the kids don’t have to go on the camp”.

• I argued it with the principal and they told me to keep the shirts and not to bother paying (did not seem happy about it). Another classmates guardian (who lives off a small pension) is also refusing to pay after I pointed out the lack of order forms and the fact it felt like the school was attempting to extort money from us in a “well the kids already have the item so pay us for it”.

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• AIO for refusing to pay, knowing the school doesn’t really have the budget to absorb the cost of the shirts?

  Aesient

• The shirts in question cost two and a half times what a normal uniform costs. The quality looks like it came from a garage sale.

  Then comes a beautiful game of blame and responsibility musical chairs: Principal blames admin for not sending order forms. Admin blames someone else. Teacher just handed out what arrived in boxes. Nobody wants to admit they ordered shirts, so they just keep running around in a circle. Which, if I were a parent to a kid in that school, would be pretty eye-opening revelations about the people EDUCATING MY KIDS.

• Now you don't have to be a genius to understand that a lot of single parents just can’t absorb surprise hundred-dollar charges on top of thousand-dollar fees. And the school using that feels too close to extortion for comfort. 

• The principal eventually says, fine, keep the shirts, don’t bother paying. Sounded unhappy about it. The kids can have their names put on regular shirts. Which I think deserves a standing ovation and rom-com-style slow clap for taking a seat on the last chair left and the blame game. As they say, play responsibility games - win blame prizes or something like that.

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