Thursday, May 27, 2010

Some Good School News

Now with Netflix streaming all these old TV shows, I tried to introduce my five year old daughter to Fraggle Rock. She was bored instantly and wanted to watch Voltron instead. That’s my girl. Although, in case you were wondering, Voltron doesn’t really hold up.

So we FINALLY got some good news regarding schools. Our daughter was accepted to another public school, a good one, on an SAS permit. What is that, you ask? Well, let me tell you. It stands for “School of Advanced Studies”. Yes, our daughter got an advanced studies permit… for kindergarten. It’s both awesome and completely ridiculous at the same time. The good thing about our home school being so shitty is that it made us eligible for the permit. Good.

It was a whole circus, but it was worth it. First, she needed an evaluation and signature from her preschool. No problem.

Then the elementary school needed to evaluate her. OK, well, how hard could that be? Can you use the word Draconian for a preschool test? Well, I think you can start now. It was insane. 30 minutes of hard core testing for our little five year old. Write your name, what’s your address, draw a picture, are you a republican or a democrat, etc.

I got a little worried because she was getting a bit intimidated. Hell, I was getting a bit intimidated. There weren’t any pleasantries. This very business-like woman brought us to a room without a “how do you do” and said right to Bella “I’m going to ask you a few questions.” I immediately looked around for the “good cop” to her “bad cop” but there wasn’t one there.

So we got through it. And she did really well. She was in a good preschool and we were working with her on letters and reading. She must have done REALLY well because a few hours later they called my wife at work and told her the permit was accepted and the principal had signed it.
I can’t even tell you what a load off that phone call was. Now we don’t have to worry about moving or trying to afford private school. At least until middle school but that’s like six years away. Huzzah!

We still are waiting to hear back from one other school but that’s it. We got into one of our top three. If we get into two then we’ll figure it out. But to be honest, we don’t think we’re going to have that problem.

We have been working on this school thing since February and my wife has a whole Excel spreadsheet with all the school info that has so much info on it I can’t even decipher it. It looks like plans to the X-1 Rocket Car. Well, if I had to pick…

So now we have our “safety school” that’s only 5 minutes away. My wife talked to her father and he couldn’t get his head around the concept that another grade school could be so close. I understood. When you grow up in the Pennsylvania or New Jersey suburbs, there is like two schools for the entire city. You either went to one or the other or went to a private or catholic school. And had to wear a uniform. Eww.

So now we can sit in the lottery drawings for the other schools’ open enrollment and not treat it like a Powerball drawing. Of course, Los Angeles could just make all the schools good, but that would be crazy.

8 comments:

Kevin McKeever said...

Yeah, making all schools good would be real work. Fight the power, Chris!

Maryellen Hooper said...

Congrats! I'm so jealous. We moved to FL to live like big fish in a small pond...turns out we have to send our fish to a better pond and it costs more than community college...for KINDERGARTEN!!!

Maryellen

JeffScape said...

Did you know that they updated Voltron in computer animation? Like, literally kept the same scripts, just computer animated them. Waste of time and money, if you ask me.

But, yeah, the lion Voltron doesn't hold up well. The one with the cars and planes does, though. Weird.

And maybe the X-1 Rocket Car is all the schooling she needs. Heh.

Keely said...

Congrats! I can't believe "advanced studies" applies to kindergarten, either. What, exactly, do they study??

Wendi said...

That's great! Although I'm a little surprised they didn't make her write a quick dissertation on French New Wave film. I mean, it IS L.A.

baseballmom said...

isn't it crazy that you have to do that for elementary school? when we opted in to T's middle school because our home school was so crappy, i felt like we were trying to get into an ivy league school! it was soooo worth it though. it is too bad that all schools can't be as good as the 'good' ones, then we wouldn't have to worry about it!

Vodka Mom said...

Psssssst if you need the inside scoop on what to practice, let me know. In the meantime, i would encourage her to practice stealing worms from the playground and sticking snails up her nose. This will TOTALLY endear her to the teacher.

(However, remind her NOT to say "Are you really OLD?" to the teacher. Does not bode well...)

Vodka Mom said...

and p.s. I'm still reeling from the eight years of Barney I had to endure when the kids were little. So is my therapist.

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