Return of the Sweeties

You'd have to have a really good memory to know this off the top of your head, but I've written about these girls before. There are two sisters a year apart that I have been in close contact, unfortunately, with since I started at this job. They are constantly being sent home for lice, and the problem has grown throughout this year. Their current attendance records show they've showed up less than 50% of the school days this year, and they have recently been through the truancy proceedings so that at each absence now the family is being cited by police and the income they receive from welfare is being withheld. I've filed a couple of CPS reports on this family myself, and after I made a referral to the Public Health Department, they also decided to file a CPS report too. In short: the parents of this family disgust me. 

The little girls suffering from this are ones I know all too well now. They hang out with me each time their teachers send them to me with lice, and we've spent long stretches together waiting for one of their unemployed parents to pick them up. I have a coloring book I keep in my desk that just the two of them have nearly completed, and they often ask about my life with such curiosity. Both are bright girls that would surely excel in school, if only they were present for more of it. 

Today I sent them home once again for lice, and as Friday is our last day of school, I likely won't see them again. The girls seemed to know this as well, as I watched one of them undo this well-loved rubber duck key chain from her backpack. She asked me to take it, and wouldn't accept it when I tried to refuse.

<Sigh.> I suppose it would be illegal for me to smuggle them home.