Kelly Nelson is upset and angry. She moved to the area with her two sons, 12-year-old Devin John and 10-year old Lawrence two years ago.
They settled into the area and the two boys enrolled at Tampa Bay Christian Academy.
Nelson is a single mom and scholarship money helped her afford the private school. Things seemed to be going well until she heard about the field trip.
The school calls it a three day, two night retreat at a campground in north Central Florida along the Suwanee River near Old Town.
It’s a mandatory trip that every student is required to attend with few exceptions.
It says right in the student handbook that every parent signs, the trip is required. Nelson didn’t feel comfortable about the outing at all.
“For me, like I say it was a personal reason why I didn’t want him to go. I didn’t want him to sleep out for two nights with a bunch of people from 7th to 12th grades,” said Nelson. “Along with their parents or chaperones that I can’t account for.”
So Devin John didn’t go.
When his mother brought him to school on Thursday, staff members told him he couldn’t go. He’d been kicked out for missing the retreat.
Nelson was livid.
“They told me if I didn’t come and pick him up, they would call the police on me,” said Nelson.
So, she picked Devin John and Lawrence up from school and told them to get their books. They wouldn’t be coming back.
Devin John is also upset about the situation.
“It was really hurtful,” said Devin John. “I didn’t really get it because, it was a field trip and I didn’t get it. I don’t know why.”
Natasha Sherwood is the head of the school, and she too is unhappy with the way the situation unfolded. She says the school made every attempt to accommodate Nelson, even offering to let her come and providing transportation.
“We do try to work with all of our parents. We always have a few concerned parents and we try to make whatever accommodations we need to,” said Sherwood.
“We actually had two separate families and had separate rooms for them, a parent and a child, that we paid for.”
That’s why Sherwood says, simply saying “I’m not sending my child” isn’t an option.
“We require kids to come to school, we require attendance, we require testing … and we require a retreat,” said Sherwood.
“It is part of our curriculum, it is part of our learning experience.”
Nelson says she doesn’t understand. As the parent, she wonders, doesn’t she have the final say on what’s right and not right for her child?
“The more they pushed for him to go, I started feeling more and more concrete in my decision not to go because it was just weird,” said Nelson.
“If a parent says no, that means no.”
