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First Day of Public School ... ever

Today was Sofia's first day of public school at Quail Run Primary School, a charter school about fifteen minutes from our house. We are trying it out on trial basis. I know that was kind of redundant. Because raising children is like an ongoing experiment.

On the way home, she reported to me that:

• There were lots of spiders (this took up the majority of the conversation).
• She got lost after lunch and didn't know what class to go to. (Their curriculum is set up like high school -no home room). But she got a flash of genius and remembered to refer to the schedule I printed out for her. With that, she was able to figure out where to go along with another lost girl and managed to help a couple of other stragglers on the way there too.
• She didn't do anything in Art because she couldn't reach the crayons. ??? I think this must have been a combination of bad ADHD meds / fatigue / stubbornness / I want someone to pay lots of attention to me.

The decision for her to go to a public charter school began with the idea to apply for admission at a couple of charter schools in order to have a Plan B, a better alternative to the regular public school, in the event that for what ever reason, I couldn't home school Sofia anymore. Applications for these lotteries are rather high so we didn't really expect to get a spot as we didn't get one at Renaissance Academy last year. But, if we were to find ourselves in this situation, I would have hated to not have even applied. Then we kind of forgot about it. At the end of spring we were notified that we got a spot at QRPS, an "ecologically responsible, multi-sensory learning" charter school.

Anyway, as I thought more about it and how to juggle Sofia's more demanding curriculum with the two little monsters that require more and more of my time, I started to think maybe I could take advantage of the schools programs which I don't or can't do at home such as music and dance. Sofia would have a better chance to make friends since our neighborhood has been a bust for that. And I would still get to cover the subjects public school can't offer (like witch craft, pre-history, and evolution) or doesn't do well, at home. I didn't realize at the time, that it's not necessarily the best move to sign up with a brand new charter school while they are trying to figure out how to actually run a school. This one had only been running for one year.

Upon filling out registration papers, I made sure to ask if they accepted "dual enrollment", the ability to attend part time and attend another form of school (private, other public school, or home school) the rest of the time. They assured me they did. I went so far as to ask if there was anyone with this arrangement enrolled in the school already and what kind of arrangements and schedules they had. I got several examples.

Well, when I went to try to make these arrangements at the start of school, the saga of charter school hell began. I got passed from one admin to another until I went full circle and finally face to face with the Director of the Board of Trustees (basically, the lady that founded the school). A nasty, rude, classless lady -no, that's wrong- b*%ch. She told me they did not have a "dual enrollment" policy in the charter, goodbye. When I questioned her about the existing students, she flat out lied to my face and told me there were none, and if there were, no one had any knowledge of them. I pressed the issue at which point she painted a picture for me of a lengthy board meeting hell of drafting a policy, talking about a policy, voting on the policy for several months and then gave me a blank stare, which I think, again, meant "good bye". After the crickets and an equally dead stare from me, she asked if I actually still wanted to pursue this. At that point, my blood was boiling and I wanted to set her on fire. I had no intention of sending my daughter to a school run by morons, BUT ... I said "ABSOLUTELY." Secretly, I wanted them to waste three months of their lives talking about dual enrollment just like they wasted my time planning for Sofia to go there.

Later, I got wind of the fact that the public can attend their secret club board meetings as long as they agree to wear a gag ball and not make direct eye contact with anyone. So I did. I had to enter the Twilight Zone to do it but I learned even more about their extra terrestrial origins and non-humanoid qualities. When they finally got to the discussion on dual enrollment, the biggest concern was how home schoolers would bring their test scores down. (Test scores which apparently they're ashamed of because they refuse to provide them for me). Second, how can we force them to take 99.9% of the classes here. Third, we don't want them to ride our buses (they could have lice -no I just made that part up, but not about the buses). Fourth, how much of our precious front office time are these HOARDS of free loader people going to take checking in and out of school? Fifth, this is getting really hard, why don't we just let them choose what programs they want since we do get FULLY FUNDED FOR THEM ANYWAY!!!

They actually started to attempt to draft a policy at that point which of course, they will probably vote down on account of spite. I left because my ass had fallen asleep on the hard wood torture device they made me sit on and I felt weird being the only one there without a laptop and facebook on my screen. No, there were no other parents there. It's possible, they were buried in the basement, though.

Another thing I wanted to accomplish having Sofia go to public school was to set on her on track for advancement. Not because of her pure genius but merely because of her close birth date to the public school cut off date for grade assignment and because we had already covered 1st grade at home, I wanted her to start in 2nd. Setting this in stone now, seemed easier than doing it later and possibly less demanding on her.  Trying to arrange evaluation testing and an appointment with the school psychologist was another ridiculous joke.  No one has ever gotten back to me on this despite my repeated attempts to follow up.


So why is she going there and going there full time at this point?  Well, I finally realized that instead of trying to do things the right way, in order to get along with people, I just need to do things the wrong way like they do.  Go around the system. Instead of fighting with their incompetency, all I needed to do was take advantage of their incompetency.  Point 1 for me:  Although, they were vehement about telling me she had been placed in 1st grade and that it was necessary to waste weeks determining if she could be placed in 2nd, they placed her in 2nd grade without even realizing it probably because that's what I had written on the registration papers. Point 2 for me: Not only do they not have a dual enrollment policy, more interestingly, they don't have an attendance policy at all!  That means, I can take her there and pick her up whenever I choose.


So,  I got the two main things I needed out of the school and really I had to do nothing.  Now, I just hope they get the rest of their academics together so she can actually benefit from their program.  What attracted me to this school was not only their ecologically responsible philosophy, but their emphasis on customizing the core subjects to the students individual abilities by breaking them up in to groups for reading and math.  They have a hands on approach to learning, no worksheets, and no homework.  They offer Music, Dance, and Drama as part of the regular curriculum as well as Spanish, ASL, Science, and Art.  They have a boxed vegetable garden outside. In addition, they have after school enrichment programs from soccer and ballroom dance to community service club.  Of course, these things sound great on paper.  Now I will have to see how well they actually materialize.


I'm already having withdrawls from our home school routine and miss being the one imparting her with the tools and knowledge to learn and to love learning.  Marcelo is also missing her, asking why I didn't make lunch for Sofia or calling her over to look at the horses, not remembering she's not here anymore.