We (our family and child) have been closed out of a popular, medium priced, private school due to questionable actions by the teacher. They stated they had no problem with our child (he holds his own in academics), but that as long as we were unhappy with the school it wouldn't work. Our child had no problems his first year at this school (1st grade) and got the Excellence in Math Award for his class. This year we agreed to put him in a split class (six kindergarten children, six first grade students) due to low admission. Though concerned at some circumstances concerning the teacher (asked back after one year of retirement) into the year, we were assured our child had a long history with the school. The last straw was when the teacher, in a innocent conversation on the way back from lunch period, informed me that a child that had been verbally abusing our child the entire year was, in fact, the victim of our child. That our child had been doing 'improper' things to this child. This child's mother had a long history with the school and had recently chosen to take issue with me for alienating her, 'Jamesy,'. Why she chose me, I'll probably never know. I welcomed her child to my home for playdates, because I knew I could properly supervise them. I even had all three 2nd grade boys into my home for a sleepover. However, after one after school playdate at this boy's home, my child told me he had gotten to play in the woods (without supervision) with the 'older kids' in the neighborhood and he learned how to play swords with sticks. My child also wanted a video game this child had that I later found out was rated 'M' (this was before they both turned 8 years old this year). I also attended this boy's birthday party, a rather sad even with little hoopla, but I stayed to help and try to support the party so the boys could feel better (I helped clean up balloon and candy trash as the father took them from one activity to another - egg toss, etc.). I was also dismayed to discover that when I wandered downstairs where the children were watching a rental movie that there was gun fight, killings and very serious injury to the characters (stabbing, blood, shootings, etc.). I questioned the movie's rating, and the father stated he didn't know. It was rated 'R'. This child is very savvy in endearing himself to adults (hugs a lot, big smiles, etc.), but has a history of antaganizing and verbally abusing other children. I had seen this behavior with myself and all the other parents had been aware of it as well. The outcome was that I became very upset about the allegations made concerning my child. I wanted to find out why I wasn't told about the alledged behavior sooner. I was told by the teacher that she was still in the act of observing the behavior - There was one week of school left to observe this 'behavior'. To our surprise, our child was uninvited to the school next year after paying registration and donating a substantial amount of money to the Capital Fundraising Campaing. They never gave us a chance to explain. 'They' told 'us' we were unhappy in light of our simply requesting that our child not be placed in the same class as this other child next year. We told them we were happy (we had been just waiting the year out with this teacher and looking forward to a better year next year). Now we're left with trying to find a school for our child (damaged more than we realized by the bullying), and I am physically sick and limited to how far I can drive our son to another school. We tried public school, but there were 26 children in the class and I witnssed physical bulling there. We are putting our child in counseling due to his character always allowing him to be bullied. He is smaller than his peers and strongly believe that it is wrong to defend himself due to what he has learned from church. We didn't see the warning signs until it was too late. Thank you for listening. Any help, words of comfort or advice would be greatly appreciated. Sincerely, Teresa, Virginia