Schooltime Woes and Glimmers of Hope

The school year is far from over, and already I am deep in the mess that is next year’s enrollment. This happens every year – the worrying about which school is the “right” school for each child, and the battle that ensues between me and the school district(s) over what the correct placement is for each child.

My children each attend a different school, two in the next district over and our preschooler in our home district (if you can pretend, like me, that preschool is actually in a district). This means on a daily basis, I go to three different schools to drop off and pick up my children. Two of these schools are a 30 minute drive (one way) from my home. Thankfully, the third is a mere 5 minutes. We carpool with another family to the two distant schools, which has also helped a lot – it means I only drive to the far schools once a day instead of twice.

However, since my two older children aren’t in the district where we reside (because they needed gifted intervention as early as possible and our home district doesn’t offer that until 2nd/3rd grade), that means we are enrolled via “open enrollment” – basically, we don’t belong to the district so they are being nice and allowing us to attend their schools because of our extenuating circumstances. Until this year, the open enrollment policy was “in once, in until you change schools.” Not so this year. I have applied for open enrollment status again and hope they will grant it, but I don’t have a definite answer yet and I don’t know when I will hear back. However – only one of the schools has requested I fill out the paperwork again, so perhaps this means my other child is still under the old policy? Honestly, I get so confused with three different schools and policies that it sometimes seems I’ll never be able to remember who needs what when. I am operating under the assumption that my two older children will be allowed to continue at the schools they currently attend, in the programs they are currently enrolled in. I hope this is the case. It has been so beneficial to our family to have them with age peers who are also their intellectual peers.

My preschooler, however, is another issue entirely. I need to find a good placement for her in kindergarten, and there just aren’t any fantastic options out there. I’m considering grade acceleration as one possible option, and at this point I’m torn between doing that in the next district over and sending her to a Harbor school here in our home district. The Harbor school claims their curriculum is advanced (though they will not allow me to actually talk to anyone who can give me specifics until/unless my child has been accepted) and I wonder if that would be enough for her at this stage. (This school also has a junior high and high school in addition to the grade school, and it seems like it would be a great option for my oldest child when she is old enough. They have an IB diploma program that looks fantastic.) However, their enrollment policy is by lottery, so we had to put her name in the drawing and wait to find out in a few months if she has been accepted to that school or not. In the meantime, I will look into the willingness of other schools to let her skip kindergarten and do first grade in the fall. We need to have her IQ testing done, but I would prefer to do it next year, after she’s had a little more time for her attention span and small motor skills to develop a bit before we send her off for hours of testing. My oldest tested into the highly gifted program and my middle child tested into the full-time gifted program. I expect my preschooler to test into the highly gifted program as well, and if the stars align just right there is a chance she may even be admitted in a year when she is old enough to qualify for the program.

In the meantime, I will continue to look around at schools and pray that we will be led to the right placement for her.

You may wonder why I am so concerned about getting her taken care of this young. A few reasons: 1) The younger children can be allowed to work at their pace and not be held back, the better. Wait too long and they will learn to shut off their brains while they wait for everyone else to catch up. 2) The increase in violence over the last several months follows the pattern of my oldest child. It made such a big difference for my oldest when she started going to the highly gifted program and started to feel like she finally belonged somewhere, and that she wasn’t the only child who was “different” than her other classmates. I am hopeful that getting my preschooler into a suitable school situation early will help prevent some of the problems we currently have with my oldest child and possibly improve some of the issues we are dealing with for my preschooler.

I, like every parent, feel my children should be given just as much chance to succeed as other kids. When the regular classroom is holding kids back, they frequently act out at school or at home. For a wonderful explanation of this, watch this video produced by SENG (Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted).

The stress and anxiety of trying to figure out how to do the best for my children I possibly can sometimes wears so heavily on me that I lose all my focus and find myself in a state of panic. I have to keep reminding myself that things have worked out thus far, and that things will continue to work out. This path was not chosen by me, and I am being guided by a greater mind than my own. And so, for now, I do all I can and put my faith in God and know that He loves my children so much more perfectly than I ever can.