Thank you everyone for your kind thoughts. I am going to see if the school director will let me write something about owning small pets and finding out their needs and to make sure you are ready for the committment before getting a pet, etc. to be able to put into the parent newsletter. There are no more guinea pigs at the school. The only pet is a cockatiel, which of course is in a small cage and never let out or paid attention to.
Hopefully the director will let me be an animal advocate without feeling slighted, and I can bite my tongue enough to not show my disgust at this situation! And I am so mad at the people I have encountered that are like, "So what? It's just a guinea pig." I have told them, "Yeah, let me say that about your dog and see how you feel!" Sometimes people are just so ignorant.