Looks like I’ll be preparing to homeschool this year, or perhaps get a full-time job so I can send my children to a private school. I’m still trying to exercise a few alternative options, like the 5% chance that I may manage to get my two elementary-age kids back into their nearby public school. But at this point I’m feeling that it’s highly unlikely since the spirit and will has been thoroughly drilled out of me to try and fight for what seems right. In my home city, such efforts appear practically systematic.
There was this form I was supposed to fill out to request that my kids be able to stay at their school. I realize, in hindsight, I should have taken care of it even without knowing what our street’s new boundary school assignment would be. I had wrongly assumed that because we live closest to my children’s school, surely we would be assigned to that school even with the changes for the coming year. Perhaps part of me was in denial—either a denial that this new boundary plan would actually be in effect (its legality is under question, as it was never approved by the state Board of Education), or a denial that any other school would end up as our assigned school.
Hurts so bad to be wrong, and then to submit a written appeal, and be denied. Frustrating beyond what I can express here. Mainly because we only just bought our first home last year, and we selected it specifically in a neighborhood that made it possible for our children to walk to the school we had already entered our oldest child in the year before. We had always wanted them to be able to walk… and I am in favor of the city here making efforts to increase walkability, and neighborhood familiarity. The new boundary plan is not a bad thing. I was fine with the old plan, too, but buses cost a lot of money that the city apparently can’t afford right now. I’m flexible. I didn’t want my kids riding buses anyway, not if I could somehow manage to drive or walk them. I’m trying hard here.
I’ve seen a few comments to the effect that if only 800 parents appealled—as may be the case according to a rumor I heard—it is a very small percentage of all the parents who could have appealed (27,000?). To that I say, how do we know this is representative of all the parents who would have liked to appeal if they had even known they could?
Also I understand that the appeals were denied across the board. So maybe they are not even really being considered.
Thus it becomes important to turn to other helpful angles where possible. Any other means to figure out how to get what we want. And for different families this means different things.
While we exhaust our resources in this direction, I will also turn my thinking to “what will I do if this doesn’t work,” and fortunately, there are choices. It’s just that it’s taken a lot of work to get where we are—buying our first home, after three kids and several years of living in one or two bedrooms, and so on. It started to feel like we were finally establishing some stability for ourselves.
If I get full-time work, it feels like less stability in a lot of ways. It takes a hell of a lot of energy and work to raise the three kids, being aged like triplets as they are. I don’t take the stress well. I’m not an executive type; I’m more of an artist. I’m organized, but I’m not high-powered. I need the time to relax, to dwell in the house, to have plenty of time where we are all doing our own thing. So home-schooling would suit us well, but I hate to be cut off from community life. The kids going to school was a good thing for all of us—for their social and cultural lives, as well as educational; and for my own, too. It was working. In spite of many strikes against us in terms of living where most people who are white and educated (like us) have given up and abandoned the place. We live with the immigrants and settle for everything they settle for, knowing that others like us would not. Sometimes this makes me angry, and throws off any feelings of stability I had managed to get a hold of earlier. When I come to grips with these feelings, and get better-grounded, I can see the arrogance and sense of superiority in my attitude. My thinking is that it’s healthy for me to live in a place that elicits such feelings of discomfort once in a while, a place that encourages me to confront those inherent feelings of entitlement. Where I live fosters personal humility, and for that I am grateful. So is this school thing a lesson along those lines?
The school my kids were assigned to is an unknown quantity, except for really bad things I have heard about the school from two other families. One mother visited with her child and was horrified at what passed for discipline in the hallways. Another mother told me she sent her son there for a while but they all hated the school. Not what you’d call a good reputation. I don’t even know where the school is located, exactly—I’ve never seen it.
I herewith invite the advice and suggestions of others on this point… more informal polling. Email me. Should I a) stay where I am and homeschool? b) move to another house where I want my kids in public school? c) stay where I am and work full-time, enrolling my children in a private school? and not mutually exclusive, d) file a lawsuit against the state and/or the city for implementing the boundary plan illegally and against precedent? For more on that question, see Daniel Oppenheimer’s pieces in the Valley Advocate, School Choice and On the Boundary.