picking a kindergarten

It's hard to believe that Kindergarten is only 9 months away. I know, that seems like a lifetime to a 4.5 year old boy, but apparently the school system here seems to think it is just the right amount of time to prepare for a new year. So all of the schools around here require that kids register in mid to late January. Being the planner that I was, I started this process back in October. Wisconsin has an open enrollment policy that says parents can essentially enroll their kids in any school in the state that has space as long as the parents transport them. When you add in all of the private school options, we had literally hundreds of choices.

While Carver's Montessori preschool is going fine, I can't honestly justify spending another $4,000 for him to attend a second year. Besides that, we are considering putting Syarra there and I don't want them in the same classroom. The public montessori here starts in first grade and the gifted school doesn't start until 3rd grade. There are a variety of other public charter schools like the classical school, but they didn't seem to be the right fit. So in November, I check online to determine which school was our local school and called the principal.

When I talk to other people about Carver's abilities, I tend to downplay them so that I don't feel like I'm bragging. Especially with new parents, it is so easy to fall into the trap of comparing children. With Principal Smith, I worked hard to be really honest about Carver's strengths and weaknesses. I wanted his honesty and I wanted to have an advocate in the school. I got both. Mr. Smith was great, and quite a few meetings that included the gifted teacher and the phychologist later, I was feeling very confident that Oakland school was willing and able to accomodate Carver's abilities.

Then last week I got the bad news. Due to an error on the school district website, I had been talking to the wrong school. Even though Oakland is twice as close, our neighborhood is slated to go to Seasons. Each principal is pretty autonomous so all of the planning we had done was down the drain and with only days until kindergarten registration, I was starting over.

Seasons Elementary is sympathetic to my situation at least and is fast tracking everything for me. Yesterday, I had a long talk with the school psychologist and she is going to conduct testing for Carver next week. The testing will be a combination of IQ and abilities and while it won't decide anything, it will give us information that we don't have currently. I have also learned that Seasons policy is in favor of grade acceleration where Oakland was not.

Tomorrow, I am heading over to see the school and meet with the principal. While private school or even homeschool is back on the table, I hope that I can figure out a way for public school to really accommodate Carver's needs.