It's Too Much School

On my mind this week has been the topic of school. My son starts kindergarten in the fall. We are fortunate that our neighborhood school is a pretty good one. It offers full-day kindergarten at a school with both a magnet and G/T program. Since we never looked at the schools when we purchased our house five years ago, we feel blessed that we do not have to scramble for a move or private school.

However, both my husband and I are having some reservations about a few things. The first started after reading Raising Cain—a parenting book about raising boys. I am a bit concerned about Alex getting lost in the shuffle of public school. He’s a smart boy who is very much “boy.” I know as his parent it may take a special teacher to reach him. And I am worried in a class of 20 something kids, a teacher doesn’t have the time to make the effort to reach out to kids, especially boys, who are acting their age.

I am even more concerned about the tiny amount recess they give to five-year olds during a full day of school. It’s even worse when I know what it takes to make my child perform well and that I’ve now lost control of providing him that environment.

The big news here in our area is the changing of school times. Lots of research has been done lately saying high school kids aren’t getting the sleep they need and that school starts too early. Yeah, our high school begins at 7: 20! That’s insane. And I am so in favor of this change. However, the change in high school start times somehow changes the start times and end times for the elementary schools. My closest guess is it’s something to do with the buses. So our school which was 8:30 to 3:10 will now go 9:20 to 4 p.m. Wow! Talk about a long day. At least with 3:10, my son still had a chance to come home, unwind a play a bit outside with friends. But a 4 p.m. end time doesn’t even give us much time for homework, let along playing. And from my standpoint, my kids are up before 7 a.m. anyway, send ‘em on to school, I say.

My dream would be to find a school where I could send my kids from 8:30 to 1:30 p.m. or 2 p.m. Somehow I’m having trouble finding schools to meet MY needs. Unfortunately, there's not much I can do at this point except wait and see. In the meantime, I am looking into a few other options. Who knew this could so stressful?