We live in the town where I grew up, which is great and kind of terrible all at the same time. My daughter attends the same pre-school that I did, and my mom used to teach there as well. If all of this sounds a little too close for comfort, let me assure you, it most definitely is. Some of the teachers at my daughter's school were there when I was a student. It's crazy but comfortable.
Anyway, my daughter, Megan, is 5 and is one of the older kids in her pre-k class. We are currently in the process of looking for a kindergarten for her. This should have been easy because we can't afford private, and we live right down the street from our neighborhood school. Here are the issues:
1) My mom now teaches kindergarten at an elementary school across town, and while I would not want to Megan to have her grandma as a teacher, it might be nice to have her at the same school.
2) A friend of mine teaches at our neighborhood school and she told me that I should look into alternatives because she would not send her kids to the school where she teaches. There are a variety of reasons she gave, but none of them really matter because all it did was freak me out.
3) One of the public schools in town does not pull from its neighborhood, but instead uses a lottery to enroll students. Two of Megan's closest friends from preschool will go there because they have older siblings already at the school. The lottery for this school is at the end of January and I want to try for it, but I also don't want to. I mentioned earlier that I grew up in this town, and I have some issues with the school and it's policies. Every other school in the town is very diverse, but this one is primarily white. I don't want to shield Megan from the diverse reality that comes from living in California. Her preschool is primarily white and I can already see her making distinctions between people based on appearance. That being said, this school has the highest test scores of any of the schools on the town, and I believe that Megan would do well there.
So I guess we'll try for the lottery, and if we get it, great. If not, so begins stage 2.
