Welp, summer break is officially done as of Monday. Memes that will be popping all over the place in the next weeks will tell me that as a parent I’m supposed to celebrate this, but it always just seems too soon to me. Granted where I grew up, the first day of school was always associated with the glorious coming of Fall, but here….it’ll be a hundred degrees.
And even though I stay as enthusiastic as I can for Violet’s sake, I really don’t like getting up early and doing homework and figuring out new teachers- plus I like hanging out with my kids, so there’s that.
But this will be different. This year Lillian will be starting school which is exciting because I cannot predict how that’s going to go for either one of us.
We had a false start last year where she was accepted into the Pre-k at Violet’s school, but it wasn’t until I got an email asking how I’d like to pay them the five thousand dollar fee that I realized that she had been given a tuition based seat.
We hadn’t paid for her sister to attend the same Pre-k program so I was kind of blindsided. They offered a payment plan, which would have been fine if we lived in an alternate universe where we had a spare $500 a month laying around, but we didn’t and had become accustomed the frivolity of things like having food and electricity at our house at the same time.
Maybe it was for the best because I’d had some concerns about her school readiness based on her behavior- mostly the biting and screaming. The voices that would come out of her room when she was alone. Moving shadows that were not attached to anything. The maliferous odors. All of the Latin.
But then there was the worry that if she didn’t get into Violet’s school for Pre-k, then she’ll have less of a chance of getting in for kindergarten. I’m not sure if this is common in other cities, but here kids don’t go to the school closest to them- even if you want them to. Here in New Orleans, we rely on the OneApp system. You can list your top choices, based on whatever criteria matters most to you, and hopefully get into at least one. If not well…..
We were lucky to get Violet into where she goes. It’s one of the better schools in the city and and this year was the third hardest to get into of all the OneApp schools. We can’t afford private education and there are a ton of bad schools around, so I started having anxiety about this when she was still a toddler.
According to OneApp, they do prefer to keep siblings at the same school when possible, but preference is not a guarantee. There are plenty of parents that have kids going to different schools and that would be a nightmare scenario for someone like me with the time management and organizational skills of a drunk raccoon.
You can put something like 10 schools down, in order of preference, when you apply and when I was applying for Violet years ago, I put down the only school I wanted her to go to. Back then, we didn’t have a car and there was only one school close to us that was well rated. Like I said, we got very lucky.
When I did the same with Lily, I received an automated email basically saying, “Heeeey you only put one school down and we advise you put more…” So I did. I looked around and added the three closest schools to Violet’s that were decently rated, my disorderly brain already trying to figure out how I would manage to drive both girls to school on time without having to drop one off super early and pay for an early care program.
Then I got another email more or less saying, “Heeeey, so the schools you put down are all highly sought after schools? You know good schools? Sooo, could you could like add some less desirable schools? You know like maybe find a couple in some bullet- ridden neighborhoods where half of the kids can’t read by sixth grade? Great. Thaaaanks…..”
And I did not. I did not do that at all.
Thankfully and owing mostly to sibling preference, it worked out and she’s set to start kindergarten. I have five years of Violet’s school hand me downs in a giant bin, Lily has her adorable Totoro back pack ready to go, I’m stocked up on peanut butter and jelly for their lunch boxes because it’s the only thing they’ll let me pack for them, and now all I have to do is ready myself for the crushing silence of an empty house.*
*Totally kidding, I’ve got a ton of work that I will finally have the time to get to now. After the weeping.
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