Thanks, MON and ABQMom.
I really don't know if she did it, and certainly we know that she is one to parse words *extremely closely* and not to be a reliable self-reporter, but she does pride herself on being truthful (although sometimes it's a technical kind of truthful). I honestly wish the teachers would put a camera in the hallway or something to keep better track of what was going on, because something similar happened in the bathroom earlier this year (twice!) and DD got blamed for that also--although the teachers did admit that nobody had seen her do it, they still had decided it was definitely her fault, partly as in your story MON because she agreed to clean it up and they thought she wouldn't do that unless she had created the mess in the first place (!).
So I totally agree if somebody saw her do it or there was no possible other explanation, then she should be punished and I would definitely back the teacher(s) up. But that doesn't seem to be the case (I have to say, between DD's reporting skills and the teachers' lack of communication generally and lack of responsiveness to our questions, I have no idea what has gone on for most of the year--which has made it really hard to work on DD's behavior at home). Our official position last time was, 'we're not sure she did it, but we'll talk to her about how inappropriate it would be to do that.' I have actually thought about getting one of those recording pens or something and having DD carry it around for a day just so I can figure it out, but that seems a little extreme even when I am most frustrated.
But I'll have to talk to DD more about it because she feels like if she doesn't confess this teacher will just keep yelling at her until she does; we mentioned this last time to the teachers but it didn't seem to make any difference this time.
So for now we are talking about all of that stuff with DD--responsibility, not lying, being respectful to others, etc. And trying to have her make sure the teachers know when she leaves the bathroom and it is clean, so they don't blame her if there is a problem later. Hopefully this will all sink in at some point so she can get along better. And we are working a lot on DD's behavior so hopefully next year with a new teacher everyone will be happy again.
Thanks though for the reality check--it just seems weird to me for a kid to be given a consequence that is at odds with the psychologist's recommendation for regular classwork. And this teacher always says things in such a negative way that even though I try to be objective and of course respectful it is pretty challenging.
