Aaaahh! Kindergarten

Freaking about kindergarten is something of a rite of passage for parents in Los Angeles.  Unless you happen to be blessed with a top performing neighborhood school or the contacts and cash to get into a private school you will probably spend the year before kindergarten frantically touring schools, applying to lotteries and calculating how to get more points on your Choices applications.

Since M has an October birthday I had the additional chance to agonize over whether or not to send him to kindergarten in the fall, when he'll still be 4 or to wait another year and send him when he's 5.  California's cut-off for kindergarten is moving over the next few years from December 2 to September 1, and this year M just makes the cut-off.   M is bright, socially well adapted, tall for his age.  These are not just my impressions, I've had conversations with his preschool teachers, piano teacher, other educational professionals and they all agree that he is an exceptional 4 year old who would probably do just fine in kindergarten. On the other hand, he still would be younger than most kids, doesn't have much interest in worksheets and asks A LOT of questions.  Perhaps too many questions for the average, overburdened public school teacher.

I thought I had come up with a fool-proof kindergarten plan.  I would apply to our top magnet and charter school choices, as well as schools that have 2 year or transitional kindergarten classes.  If we didn't get in anywhere we would just do a 3rd year of preschool and we'd have a chance to re-apply for kindergarten next year.  As expected, we didn't get in to any of the schools we applied to and our wait list positions were pretty dismal (at one school we were simply told that we're on page 5).  I was a bit depressed, but fine with M doing a third year of preschool.  Then the older class at M's small preschool disintegrated-- some kids got into TK, some decided they wanted a full day program, some moved, the end effect being that instead of being one of several 4-5 year olds at the school he would be the oldest kid by 8 months.  Even the preschool director agreed that this situation wasn't best for M and she would prefer to see him move on to kindergarten rather than be in an environment where he wouldn't be challenged.

This development completely blew my semi-zen attitude about schools.  No longer was I calmly saying "there are lots of good choices out there".  I was in panic mode.  I revisited our decision to delay kindergarten a year.  Although deadlines for most magnets and charters were long since passed there were a few nearby language immersion schools (Mandarin or Spanish) that we might still be able to get in.  But if I questioned whether a traditional school was going to be too much for M this year, was he really ready for a traditional school in a foreign language? We are guaranteed a spot at our neighborhood school which a few years ago seemed fine, but a new principal, a testing scandal and some grumbling by local parents has me second guessing it.  I could apply to another preschool, but I hadn't researched preschools for 3 years and had no idea which schools might be a good fit and have openings.

Thankfully, my distraught facebook post led to a few leads and we found a preschool with a 4 and 5 year old class, not too far away, with open spots.  So now M has a place to go to school and, for those of you who saw my Costa Rica post, I do not have a parasite.  All is right in again in the world.