The Final Piece of Straw?

Warning: a long, fairly rant-y post ahead.

Okay, at this point, I think that our school district preschool is just messing with me.

What has come before:
When I went to registration at Gee's school, I asked normal, registration-type questions: Which days will Gee have preschool? What times? Can I meet with his teacher to discuss things? When do they start?

The office staff was very polite, but they could not answer any of the questions. The teacher, newly hired, had not yet come in. She (the teacher) would contact me very soon.

Two weeks passed, during which time I had a baby. And during which time I heard nothing from the school. The Friday before Zee started school (at the time I didn't know that preschool started two weeks later), I got a telephone call from Gee's teacher, Miss B., asking me to come to an open house for all the preschool parents on the following Monday. Yay hooray, contact!

It was there I was told that there would be no preschool in the afternoon, like last year. This created a significant problem, because Gee would be arriving home on the bus just at the same time that Em would need to be arriving at kindergarten, at a completely different school.

Sigh. It would have been nice to know that ahead of time, but such is life. Although it was a bit of a headache and mess for everyone, the marvelous administrators and teachers at Em's school got her switched to morning kindergarten. Now I have a thirty minute buffer, and a bunch of ward-friends in the same class as Em, with accompanying carpool-ability.

Gee's school starts on the Tuesday after Labor Day--a couple of days from now. We were told that the bus people would be calling us with exact pick-up and drop-off times, and so when I saw a message from the public schools on my voicemail on Thursday (two business days before school), I assumed that it was the schedule.

I was wrong. It was the aide from Gee's class, telling me that because of scheduling difficulties, preschool would now start and end thirty minutes earlier. The transportation people will be calling soon with the bus schedule.

Now Zee, Em, and Gee all start school at the same time, in two different schools. And Em and Gee now get out of school at the same time. So we could have kept Em in afternoon kindergarten after all, and in fact it would have been to our advantage to do so. Argggh!

Still, with the bus adding time to Gee's schedule, it still will work. If only I could know the bus schedule, so my mind could be at rest! I waited patiently until today (Friday) at 3pm.

The straw that broke the camel's back:
With only two hours left in the business day before the three-day weekend, I called the transportation office.

"Can you tell me what time my son will be picked up for preschool on Tuesday?"

"Oh, they won't be doing bus service on the first day of preschool."

Excuse me? Why not? And, more importantly, when was I going to be told? Hello, people? Get your act together!!!

"Um, that would be important information for the parents to know, don't you think?"

"Well, the bus drivers were just told this morning that there wouldn't be bus service on Tuesday. They will be calling the parents with the schedule soon."

It wasn't the receptionist's fault, so I refrained from saying any of the astonished/angry/incredulous things running through my mind. It is now nearly five pm on Friday, and I still haven't heard from the bus driver.

So, to recapitulate: I am repeatedly left in the dark for days on important information about my son's school. I pointlessly rearranged my daughter's kindergarten schedule. And now, I have to figure out how to pick up my daughter and my son at the same time, at two different schools, at least three miles apart. And if I wasn't pro-active about calling the transportation people, I still wouldn't know this.

Tell me again why I should trust my child with these people?