I did it!

Today I got all the paperwork turned in for my kids to go to a Charter School. Sorry, Darcy! But, I had to do it. Our school put our kindergartners on a traditional schedule while the other grades were year round. What that would have meant for me is I would have had the boys in kindergarten on a traditional schedule while the girls were on tracks. Then the next year, Isabel would have been on a traditional schedule while the three younger kids were on tracks. That would have been a lot of juggling for me. (Which by the way, we fought and fought changing the kindergarten schedule and the principal just said, "deal with it!" He did not care what we had to say.) So, now all of my kids will go to a school at the same time, and have the same vacations and I can keep it that way for four years if I like (it goes up to junior high). As, I started looking at the different curriculums of the two schools, I found that the Charter School starts the kids reading right off the bat in kindergarten and uses phonics where the public school teaches a letter of the week and a couple of words a week, which I do in preschool. The Charter School's curriculum is also a little more accelerated, which is nice. We will have summers off, which is nice and the girls will have to buy uniforms. That is fine. They also do a school play every year which Isabel is excited about. Isabel is excited. Lucy, not so much.

So, when we (my friend and I) took the paper in today to have the principle of the old school sign for the release of our records, the secretary said, "You know if you leave you can't come back." We said, "We know. We don't want to come back." Then she said, "Well, we don't want you back." Case in point of how that school treats people. As of now, I am glad we made the jump, especially with the attitude of "good, we are glad you are leaving." Now the principal of that school can make all the crappy decisions he wants too and it won't bother me one bit and I won't have to "deal with it". Let's hope it all works out. But, I can't keep my kids at a school where they are just a number and the school can live without them. If I was running that school, I would have said, "we are sorry you are leaving and if you want to come back, we would love to have you." If you don't like my kids even half as much as I do, then guess what, you don't get to be around them.

When I went to the other school and talked to the vice-principal, she answered all my questions, calmed all of my fears and treated me like a person. I just feel that if she treats me that way, she will treat my kids that way. I have been a teacher in the public schools, so I was always a big supporter of them, but now I am afraid that I am losing faith. So, good bye old public school! Charter School, here we come....make me a believer!!!