Is there anything wrong with being branded pushy? My mom got a lot more of what we wanted after she stopped being nice and put her foot down, after 2 years of me being miserable in public schools (and a fourth grade social studies teacher yelling at me for contradicting her when she said the pilgrims were the first white people in the US). Somehow I automatically got assigned to the best teachers and so on after that without having to request anything, and teachers no longer dared take anything out on me. Later on my mom learned that she'd get more appreciation on her job and better treatment in a hospital setting if people thought of her as pushy rather than as a doormat.
Obviously you shouldn't start hostile, but there's nothing wrong with wanting to talk. You don't have to be pushy about it at all... we've been told that principals and teachers often like it when parents request an informal meeting just to learn about the school and discuss the upcoming year. Though this appreciation of parental involvement is is probably more true in the lower SES neighborhood schools than in the higher SES neighborhood schools. You could also probably use such a meeting to discuss volunteer opportunities and other kinds of issues, approaching it as a how can we help, how can we move forward, here are our special issues, etc. kind of meeting.
But if later, push comes to shove, there's nothing wrong with being firm and polite, and yes, a bit pushy.
