Middle school is already rough enough without power-tripping administrators making things worse. One 13-year-old student was just trying to do something productive by volunteering to help her art teacher during summer school. With the help of the teacher, she sent a polite, well-written email to her principal to ask for approval. The student came home all excited to tell her parents about her plan, only to have her dreams ripped away by 10 p.m. that same night.

The principal apparently took major offense to the polite email, claiming it was «disrespectful» to email her superior, and demanded an apology for addressing her in such a casual way. Understandably, the girl’s parents were not thrilled, so her mom decided to talk to the principal in person. But instead of getting an explanation, she got thrown out of the school and then received an email full of wildly exaggerated claims about what had happened. Now, the family is stuck wondering how to handle a principal who made their daughter cry, banned the mom, and refused to admit she was wrong.