Hellobee

March 1st has been on my calendar for about six months now. This was the day I needed to register LeLe for Kindergarten. I didn’t really think too much of it, but last week, I finally brought it up at home and Mr. Cereal and I had to go through quite a list of things to decide what we wanted to do for her as far as Kindergarten goes. We’ve been through a lot in the last few months in our house — Mr. Cereal changed jobs, I got accepted to a doctorate program and started a rigorous research project, so the idea of next year was always just a far away thought. Until now, of course.

The city we live in is sectioned out for elementary, middle, and high school districts. If you live within a certain boundary, you are assigned to a specific school (actually a set of schools). In our case, LeLe is assigned to a school that is very small and pretty close to the edge of the school district’s boundary. We were both happy with the placement, but as we got closer to having to make this decision about where to send her, some other issues started to surface.

The first is the distance the school is from my work. I do most of the pickups and drop-offs right now (another issue entirely) and the preschool the kids are at is pretty close to my work. This is great because I often have to leave work to do pickup, which reduces the amount of time I am spending away from the office. But the elementary school is clear across town, about 25 minutes away without traffic. The issue with this is that the elementary schools get out at 2:40 M-Th and 1:40 on Fridays. For me to pick her up, I would have to leave work at 2:20ish, pick her up, either take her to a babysitter or to daycare, and then head back to work. The whole trip would probably take an hour, which doesn’t really work, especially because during two quarters of the year, I teach in the afternoons. That much time away from work is just not conducive. Mr. Cereal works in an entirely different town so his ability to do pickup or drop off is pretty minimal.

The second reason is that this school, in the past, has been one of the lowest ranked in the district. This is mostly because it is the smallest and received the least amount of funding as a result. This one bothers me less as I know that LeLe and Little Bug are smart and could be successful anywhere, despite the funding issue. They also have a new principal this year and he has turned around two other schools in his previous positions, so I am confident that he will be able to do the same here.

Lastly, we are planning on moving to a new house in the next year or so and it will most likely not be in the same boundary school. This is concerning to me because I hate the idea of LeLe making friends and then having to switch to a different school. She is such a social person and I worry about her having to start over with new kids.

We have the option within our district to request a transfer to another school, but the transfer spots are limited. So as a result of this, we had to decide which schools to request a transfer to. This seems like an easy task, but in reality, it was way more convoluted than we expected. The first issue was distance, as discussed above. I would prefer a school that is closer to my work so I can easily do drop-off and pickup without missing a ton of time at work. We also would like the school to be within an easy distance for my parents to do pickup sometimes as well. This narrowed down the options to four schools.

Two of the schools are a dual immersion curriculum, with 70% of the first three years being taught in Spanish. To me, this is super appealing on the one hand (yay for them learning a new language) but on the other hand, I know exactly zero Spanish and it worries me that I won’t be able to help with homework. The only other issue with these two schools is that location-wise, one is pretty ok and close to the neighborhoods we would like to be in by 2020ish. The other school is located in a more remote area and is just as cumbersome as the school we are assigned to. The other two schools are awesome all-around. Well funded, great teachers, great administration. One of those schools is actually so popular that they closed transfers for this year, which means it’s a no-go for us. The remaining school is really wonderful. I work with the teachers frequently through my work and it is one of my favorite schools in the district.

So now we are at the point where we need to make a decision pretty soon. We are going to attend the information night at our assigned school, and currently LeLe is enrolled there per the district rules. I am not opposed to this school at all, in fact I really like it a lot other than the distance issue. In addition to the assigned school, we’ve decided to put in a transfer request to one of the immersion schools and the remaining school that is accepting transfers and is in our ideal location.

And now we wait. If our transfer requests are granted, we are going to have to really buckle down to make a decision, and for me, I am pretty certain that I would choose the non-immersion school in the area we would like. This school is really awesome and I am likely not going to be leaving my job any time soon, so the location would work for the foreseeable future. The other benefit is that this school provides a life-skills curriculum, so my kids would be able to integrate with students who need a little extra help. In my elementary school, we had a similar program and I learned so much from the kids in that program. I want my kids to have exposure to that and to be able to interact with them in the classroom. As far as a long term option, this one seems like the best, and would probably be the ideal situation.

If we don’t get the transfer, we will be fine. The kids already like the school they are assigned to, and LeLe, in her beautiful agreeable way, has said that if she has to change schools after a year or two, she is ok with that. I feel kind of naive for not considering all of this earlier in the year, but I honestly didn’t think that this would be as much of a production as it has turned into. There is also a part of me that feels like a complete newbie trying to navigate something that I had not anticipated at all. I can’t wait until I am enrolling Little Bug and I feel confident rather than scared. This is another one of those parenting things that really snuck up on me.