SCHOOLED
This article was published in the August 23, 2025 issue.
The main office staff at Bishop High School are, like generations before them, courteous, professional, all-seeing, all-knowing sources of information and gentle wisdom.
Their phone skills will be tested this year when they deal with parents getting used to the new cell phone ban in classrooms. As usual, I want to be helpful. So I am offering the real office crew some of my, uncourteous, unprofessional answers they should never use when answering with some of the “routine” questions, pleas, whines or cries for help from concerned or overwrought parents.
PARENT 1: Hey, my kid is not responding to my texts, calls or emails during the school day, did I miss something?
OFFICE: You sure did Mr. Oblivious, welcome to 2025. It’s a new policy this year. All Bishop High School students’ cell phones go in a pouch held by the teacher during class. But since the students get their phones between classes and at lunch, please consider that your teen is ignoring your texts and doesn’t want to answer you, or maybe not even acknowledge your existence. That’s their job. Welcome to the High School years.
PARENT 2: My kid forgot his lunch money, which I think qualifies as an emergency, contact him.
OFFICE: An emergency is spilling your fries on the driver’s side floor. Text him info on intermittent fasting.
PARENT 3: Please message my kid that she needs to come home immediately after school.
OFFICE: Tell her yourself.
PARENT 4: Hey, the state law mandating this cell phone ban doesn’t go into effect until next year, so why is Bishop doing it this year?
OFFICE: We’re always a step ahead and on the cutting edge. Duh.
PARENT 6: Please make an exception because I really need to send my son a positive affirmation every 30 minutes to keep building his confidence and reassuring him that he will do great things.
OFFICE: No exceptions. But here’s something that might help: Google, “How Helicopter Parenting Ruins Kids and Marriages.”
PARENT 7: Since you interact with the youth, can you translate the new abbreviations and slang they text? I’m confused.
OFFICE: All of those mysterious texts are part of the Universal Top Secret Teen Code that can be summarized with four words: “My Parents Are Lame.”
PARENT 5: I need to contact my kid to make sure he is back in school after lunch.
OFFICE: No, you don’t.
PARENT 8: Is there any way to add other “emergencies” to the list besides a school lockdown, fire, earthquake, etc., which will make teachers give students their phones back?
OFFICE: It depends on the circumstance, but it is absolutely not an “emergency” that your daughter and her boyfriend are wearing the matching shirts you bought them, so you need to pull them out of class and get a once-in-a-lifetime photo.
PARENT 9: The next time she gets caught vaping, I hereby give the principal permission to absolutely spank my obnoxious, rebellious daughter in hopes it will knock some sense into her.
OFFICE: Noted. Also, please note Googling, “How Gentle Parenting Works.”
PARENT 10: I know they are in class, but my kid mistakenly took my car keys and I need to contact her so I can get them and go to work.
OFFICE: Are you kidding? Call in sick, curl up on the couch and take the day off.
PARENT 11: Oh no, oh my goodness, my son didn’t do the essay due today, so contact him and tell him I’ll write it using AI and email it to him during lunch.
OFFICE: You really don’t want him to graduate, do you?
Jon Klusmire of Bishop recalls the Pre-Cell Phone Ancient Times when calling the office was the only way to contact your kid in school.
