The Beginning of the End

We've been very busy with the new school year.

Domino's teacher is the PERFECT teacher for him. She's kind, warm, fuzzy, creative, musical, and well versed in children with sensory issues. She listens, she responds, she seeks my advice, she makes me feel like we're part of a team. I couldn't ask for a better teaching environment for him (other than the removal of a few specific students from the classroom, but hey, it's a public school...). His teacher took the class on a field trip to her house to study the Napa Valley. She has 13 acres of grapes and the kids worked on their map making skills, studied the horticulture of the grapevine and the science of making grape jelly! She thinks outside the traditional teaching methods and finds unique ways to get information through. She's the teacher all the parents hope their child gets. Former students run to give her hugs. She makes a difference.

Rascal is flourishing in kindergarten. His teacher this year is Domino's first grade teacher from last year. There's a comfort that is there based on familiarity but the class is different - a combo K/1 class. It's a hard class to manage and I can see the teacher has her work cut out for her. There's a wide range of abilities, based on temperaments and the ages of the kids. There's some first graders who are turning 7 and some kindergartners who are still 4 and can't figure out how to use a pair of scissors. Rascal is bright, confident, articulate and very eager to please. Each day Rascal likes to give me the "apple report" (a chart of apples that indicate each child's behavior for the day), the recess update (who played with who), and then he tattles about someone "not respecting boundaries". He is very proud that his apple has never been changed and I worry that when he does make a mistake and gets reprimanded, he's going to lose his marbles completely.

But I tend to worry about things before they happen...

We learned last week that their school as we know it will be shut down at the end of the school year. Some crap about it being marketed as a magnet school, but no guarantee that it will have any federal funding to really make it one. The school district has decided that the schools need to reflect the racial diversity of the county and has announced their plans to rezone, realign, reboundary and whatever else they feel like to make the schools "diverse" - including merging our "alternative program" with the "traditional program" housed on our campus.

For us, merging our schools is a horrible prospect. I drive 20 miles each way to attend this unique school, work my required volunteer shifts at the school (2-3 shifts a month per child, libary parent twice a week, Marvelous Mondays assistant on Monday afternoons, information team leader, create school rosters and handbooks, liaison between teachers and parents... and the list goes on and on...) and other parents in the alternative program are like minded and working in areas to benefit all our children. We're all involved in our childrens' education and their happiness and test scores reflect that. Our scores will be watered down by the traditional program stats and instead of a distinguished eduction, my boys will receive a regular run of the mill public school one. Those who attend our alternative program are being called racists because we don't want to mix our 85% "non-minority" school with the 90% "minority" english language learner school. Forgive me for not wanting my kids to be flushed down the public school system drain.

Most parents are all still working in the school, waiting for its official demise. Some are leaving now, some are riding it out - and some are willing to continue on next year with the mixed non-alternative program school. There's endless playground chatter among the adults "What are you doing next year?" "Will you be back?" "Did you hear so and so is leaving??" and the kids are already picking up on it. "What's going on Mom?" the boys have already asked. "Oh, some changes are going to be made to your school next year". "What changes?" "I don't really know all of the details yet, but will let you know when I do."

I fear the transition from alternative teaching methods to traditional ones filled with ditto sheets and desks. I wonder how the boys will adjust. I worry about the loss of my boys tight knit group of friends and small school environment - moving to a school more than 5 times the size we're used to. I mourn the sudden end of my parent involvement in their classroom and their school. And all of that perseveration is based on a "best case scenario" that I can get the boys into my preferred school in our town. It's not a bad school, it's just not the type of teaching program I dreamed the boys would attend. And if I don't get them into that school, and they are forced to go to our designated "neighborhood school" instead, we're seriously considering the homeschool option. God help us all.

The change is many months away, and my boys are more resilient than I give them credit for, but I recognize that I have to be very careful. I know they will take their cues from the way that I handle the process. I don't do change very well...