Imagine working with children at a daycare, and it’s really important that there are no more than 8 children per teacher at any given time. Would you be willing to break this ratio if a child were sick and needed your attention or if children were misbehaving and needed to be pulled aside?

In this story, one supervisor and one teacher disagree about the answer to this question. Now, the teacher is thinking about reporting the supervisor.

Let’s read all about it.

WIBTA for reporting my supervisor?

For some context, I work as a daycare teacher part time and where I live, the ratio is 1 educator to 8 preschoolers.

This past Thursday, I had just gotten to work and it was around 3:45 pm. I was on one side of the yard, guarding a bridge that lead to the other side of the yard, where two of our children were testing boundaries.

I was called over by my coworker, and she told me that one of the children told her that she wasn’t feeling well.

The child did look sick.

I looked at the child, and she was very pale, crying, and overall looked sick to her stomach.

I thought she was going to be sick, so I turned around to count how many children there were to see how many children I needed to take with me, when my coworker told me we had 11, so I only needed to take 3.

I grabbed the closest two, and took the three of them inside.

As I opened the door, a parent arrived for pickup.

Not breaking the ratio is apparently really important.

While I was waiting for the child as she used the rest room , my supervisor asked how many kids I had and I told her three.

She then ran back outside and told my coworker to count again.

I didn’t think much of it because ratio was constantly broke at my other job, and it was never a big deal.

My supervisor came in the room a minute or so later and told me that we broke ratio and I needed to count next time.

This supervisor doesn’t really seem to care about the children.

I explained to her how my coworker told me I only needed to take three, and my main concern was the possibly sick child.

She told me that ratio’s were more important than a child getting sick, and then left.

Later that night, I was walking back from the front door after bringing a child to their parents and she was talking to my coworker about it. She said that she contacted our bosses and explained what happened from her perspective only, and they told her it wasn’t that big of a deal, and it wasn’t a serious occurrence.

I re-explained what happened from my perspective, and that I didn’t want to create a biohazard on the yard, especially when we had an Autistic child in our care that would definitely play in it (they’d done it before), and I was told I should have let the child get sick on her self and in front of everyone else because, once again, ratio’s are more important than a sick child.

The supervisor really doesn’t seem to care about the children!

The next day, however, I came in around 1 to cover lunch breaks because we were short staffed. When the coworker I worked with the day before came back from her break, she told me that the supervisor had gone around gossiping about what happened to everyone else.

Thankfully, everyone was on our side, but it still hurt.

Later that night, we were closing the centre together again, we were talking about how unfair it was, and my coworker told me that she had brought up concerns about the two children pushing boundaries and she brushed it off and said that she cared more about ratios than out of control children. Since she’s told me that, I’ve considered emailing our bosses with our sides of the story and reporting her.

So, would I be the AH for reporting her?

She should definitely report the supervisor. I’m sure ratios are important, but they’re not more important than sick children and correcting children who are misbehaving.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this situation.

Here’s a vote for reporting her.

But this person thinks she’s overreacting.

This person has a problem with the supervisor gossiping.

Here’s another vote for reporting her.

Keeping the children safe is the most important thing.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.