#39, that was your school. None of the schools I was in did that. They never checked with the parents to see if the doctors note or excuse was real.

My school failed to check a note exactly once, and they learned to never make that mistake again because they made a girl participate in relay day and about ten minutes in she dropped because she couldn't breathe. Her mother had written the note and wasn't very strong at the English language and the girl was getting over a lung infection. Regardless of how well a teacher thinks their "bullshit detector" is working if a student is flat out telling you they have a medical issue and a note, they need to double check and not assume they are right.

@66 I think if the OP was aware the child and/or parents had another primary language the teacher would have thought longer on calling a parent for confirmation. Let's have a little faith in the people teaching our kids. The post should be appreciated for its irony, and not providing the opportunity to bash teachers.

The OP may not have ever met the student in questions parents prior to this issue. Sometimes you don't realize that a person's parents don't speak the language because the child does due to attending the public school system in the country. I give the OP the benefit of not knowing but as someone who also has a father with terrible handwriting and a grandfather who not only has bad handwriting but spells terribly and misuses words due to the way he was taught growing up, I'm still bothered by the assumption that the kid was faking and the lack of verification. The proper thing to do in the first place would have been to contact the kids parents even if it means sending the kid to the schools office to do so. That way if they are faking it, the parents are made aware of what they are trying to pull and if they aren't the OP doesn't wind up in this kind of situation.