speaking of school

I've alluded to this on Facebook, but for those of you who don't know, here's the scoop. I'm looking for a new elementary school for the girls. Yes, we've been at the same school since Madster was in Kindergarten. Yes, the littles have been familiar with this same school since birth. Fi's been attending the ECE (Early Childhood Education program that DPS offers 3 & 4 year olds) at this school this year.

For whatever reason, DPS has made the citywide ECE program to be neighborhood preferential, instead of sibling preferential. So that, because we aren't neighborhood, but have choiced in (4 and 5 years ago), Lib doesn't have a spot in any of the 21 ECE openings next year due to 27 neighborhood kids applying. Oh, it gets better.

I never received any kind of announcement stating when the Kindergarten applications were due -or even that we had to fill one out- until mid- February. The deadline was 31 January. I handed ours in the same day as the ECE application due date, 22 February. Really, I wouldn't have found out about the ECE deadline but for talking with the ECE para one day while Lib was visitng the classroom. Even the K application didn't have any kind of due date printed on it. Of course the office says they did indeed give notice in the weekly newsletter. Hmmmm. I have every single newsletter I've received this year. I keep them for a little CYA, if you know what I mean. Well, let me put it this way, I have every newsletter that Maddie's given me out of her backpack this year. Which is to say, I don't have EVERY newsletter printed. There are a few missing.

We've been struggling with this for the whole school year, getting Maddie to turn in homework, getting Maddie to do homework, getting Maddie to give us paperwork from school. I'm sure we're not the only parents with this problem. Yet, the school sends paperwork home with ONLY the eldest child in a family. I did find ONE newsletter from 17 January stating that K apps would be available from 1 Jan unitl 31
Jan, or something to that effect. It was shoved in with some other papers in the garbage bin in Maddie's room. Wait, there's more.

So, we've handed in the paperwork right. But it turns out that when we handed it in, the folks at the front office didn't code it properly when they turned it into the choice office at DPS. As in, they didn't notate on Fi's paperwork that she had an older sibling already enrolled at the school. They said it was because "they have different last names". Oops. We've been at the school for 5 years. They know all of the girls. Well, now they conveniently don't, apparently. So then Fi's not on the list for sibling preference either. WTF. Supposedly they've corrected all that. But Fi is still on the "2nd round choice" list, which means we won't know until August whether or not she can go to this school. And no matter where we apply, unless it's our neighborhood school -which we won't be attending- she's going to be on the 2nd round choice list because 1st round choice is over.

Meanwhile, I've talked with another mom who also didn't receive notification of the application process, but heard from someone else the week before they were due. I've also spoken with our former K teacher who agreed that the whole lack of communication with current school families regarding K applications & choicing in stinks.

What to do now? Someone suggested I call the choice office & complain. Yeah, I might do that. Really, I'm tired of this school. It may look good on paper, but I find some of the attitudes unacceptable -the entitled, privileged, cater-to-me attitudes, the clicque-y-ness of the kids & the adults, namely. Really, it's amazing to me that when the school needs something, money or whatnot, they don't have any problem at all communicating that tirelessly. The school auction is the only fundraiser & is advertised & talked about for months beforehand. Obviously, that effort has paid off; the auction this year is the talk of the town, having raised nearly 6 figures.

But isn't the education of the children more important than that? Or rather, isn't the abilty to maintain a sense of community with ALL of the school's families (not just the one's who can spend big at the auction) more important? You know, watching out for each other's backs, making sure the children have a sense of belonging & stability -the way a community should do? Guess not. And do I really want my children to go to a school where making sure current students are properly enrolled for the following year garners a 6 line blurb in a newsletter but fundraising earns a full page as well as add-on pages for weeks on end.