Kindergarten Roundup

Among the adoption-related items on my to-do list in preparation for leaving for China, I also have, "submit kindergarten lottery registration".  Since school selections are due around the time we’re planning to come home from China, we toured schools late this fall and will submit our registrations before we leave.  

Deciding on a kindergarten shouldn’t be so difficult. It used to be that if kids went to public school, district boundaries dictated which school they went to.  Parents had no choice really, unless they could afford to move or send their kids to private school.  Not that lack of choice is a good thing, but it does make the deciding part a whole lot easier.  

Instead we live in a district that touts “school choice,” which depending upon the neighborhood you live in and resources available to you, could mean an overwhelming number of choices, or no realistic choice at all. The St. Paul School District has some excellent schools that rival the education found in a top-notch private school, but also schools that are so bad (in my opinion) that we would sell the house we just finished renovating and move before I'll send my kids there.  I'm convinced that sending my kids to certain schools in St. Paul would be more detrimental to my kids' education, safety and well-being than not sending them to school at all.  Thankfully our designated community school is well-respected and everyone we've talked to who sends their kids there love it.  On the other end of spectrum in school quality are my friends who live in neighborhoods not far from my own whose community school has the lowest test scores in the city.  That school is clearly not a realistic choice for their children.  

Regardless of what you think of your community school, there are choices beyond that school (in theory, at least) and that's where choosing a school gets complicated. A few years ago, St. Paul rezoned its school assignments and created a “community school” for every zone of the city. It's trying to get back to neighborhood schools, which I support, except if my neighborhood had a crummy option, I'd gladly drive my kids to school on the other side of the city if I had to. The district also designed schools with special programs or teaching philosophies (International Baccalaureate, language immersion, Montessori, STEM, for example) as regional magnets or city-wide magnets.  Instead of sending your child to your community school, you can opt to send them to a regional magnet (where your children and the other children in that particular region have preference) or one of the city-wide magnets.

The problem is that the few schools in St. Paul considered “good” are over-subscribed with children from within the school boundaries and outside applying for spots.  If the school is designated your community school, your child is very likely to get in, but the district does not guarantee you a spot.   The district technically gives you two choices during the school lottery.  School placement workers counsel parents that if their first and second choices are for “popular” schools, (i.e., ones I consider good schools) and they don’t get into their first-choice school, they're not going to get into the second-choice school either, because all the spots will have been filled by families who picked it as their first choice school and/or by rising kindergartners who have an older sibling already attending the school. That means that you really only have one shot of getting into a good school, and that chance is pretty slim if that school isn't your community school.   

It feels like you have to put all your eggs in one basket.  Do you list the community school outside your zone that has more spots available because it’s a large school, but also where kids in the zone or those with siblings have preference over you, as your first choice, or the regional or city-wide magnet, for which you have equal preference as everyone else, but there are also fewer spots available? Even for us with a good community school option, what if we liked one of the regional or city-wide magnets better?  Do we cross our fingers and hope we get into the school we like better, or play it safe and stick with the community school where we get preference in the lottery?  The college application process of identifying "reach" and "safety" schools had to have been less stressful than deciding how to rank my son's kindergarten registration. 

Then there are charter schools to consider.  In Minnesota, charter schools are tuition-free, independent schools, so many families .  They are also open to all students in the state, so the neighborhood or city you live in doesn't have any bearing on your chances of getting in. Charter schools also hold their own lotteries, so parents can apply to one or more charter schools, as well as the St. Paul School District lottery and hope their child gets into at least one.  

I know it seems silly to stress about deciding on a kindergarten, but I care deeply about my children's educations.  I simply want them to go to a school where they feel safe, where they can develop strong friendships and jump start a lifelong interest in learning.  I want them to love school.  I want them to learn more than their father and I can possibly teach them.   

In the end, we only toured two schools, Expo, our community school, and the Twin Cities German Immersion School, a charter school in St. Paul.  I wanted to see more, including the Chinese immersion magnet school in our district, a regional magnet with an IB program that would have given our kids automatic admission to a better middle school and high school than the ones we're zoned for, and the K-8 arts-focused school down the block from our house.  The the reality is, with my maternity leave looming,  I didn't have time to tour every school I had a passing interest in.  

I liked Expo, but I had hoped to love it like everyone else does.  Instead, I loved the German immersion school, which surprised me.  I'm a little leery of schools that have a special focus, whether that be language immersion, science and technology, the arts, or whatever, because while all those things are great, kids need to learn to read, write and do arithmetic.  I want a school to provide a core academic foundation.  That's what I saw in action at the German school and the language immersion component was simply a bonus. 

We'll rank Expo as our top choice in the St. Paul school lottery and apply to the Twin Cities German Immersion School.  Sometime in late February we'll hear whether Oliver has a spot in one school or the other, or even both.