Not Special Like Twins

My call to the St. Paul School District's Student Placement Office started out innocently enough.  Friends with twins had told me that if one twin gets into a school in the lottery, the other twin automatically receives a spot too.  However, when I filled out the application to register Kiera and Soren for Pre-K, there was no way to indicate that the child had a sibling applying for the same grade. You could only write in the name of an older sibling already attending the school. So I called and asked what to do.

The first person I spoke to explained that the computer system knows when children are twins because they have the same birth date and home address.  I took a deep breath, and told our family's makeup, which is so normal to us, but certainly new to everyone else - Soren and Kiera are five months apart in age.  For the purposes of the school lottery, I wanted to know, how does the district know that my two are siblings?  According to the person I was talking to, the district didn't need to know because there is no preference for "similar-age" siblings, just twins.

A somewhat heated, but still rather civil, discussion ensued in my attempt to figure out why the St. Paul School District wouldn't apply the twins preference to my children.  The man I was speaking to quickly gave up though and offered to have me speak with his supervisor.  She hopped on the phone and started off with a cheerful "hello". I was hopeful. Surely there had been a misunderstanding and so I repeated our family's situation.  She actually seemed more confused than her subordinate. She told me the preference is only for twins because parents try to push a sibling ahead a grade or hold one back so that the two children are in the same grade. Growing even angrier, I explained that wasn't our situation as my children have October and March birthdays, so they fall squarely in the age range for Pre-K. I asked her why they have a policy to not separate twins, but she could give no reason that wouldn't also apply to Kiera and Matteo. 

After a lot of unproductive arguing back and forth, she offered to have the Placement Director give me a call. If I was fuming after the first two conversations, I was enraged at the point that he told me that if Kiera and Soren had coincidentally had the same birthday, they still wouldn't get the twin preference because they're not actually twins.  He was fixated on the idea that a "twins" preference couldn't possibly apply to children who are not twins. 

This mama bear had completed flipped her lid and a co-worker who had overhead my conversation commented to another coworker that he felt sorry for the person on the other end of line because this guy had knowingly stepped between mama bear and her cubs.

I get that our situation is unique, but I'm tired of dealing with people who can't think objectively. This not the first time in the short year since my children have been home that they've been treated differently than families with only biological children.  It was a nightmare to get my American children social security cards and put on my health insurance.  Someone at the Social Security Administration office told my husband Matteo's name was too long and we needed to shorten it.  (A call to Senator Franken's office had that issue fixed in 24 hours, because as his staff said, SSA isn't Twitter - your name isn't limited to 140 characters.) Even when I told a friend (who's coincidentally a twin) the story about my confrontation with the Placement Office he looked at me and said, "But twins are special."

More is at stake than the principle of being treated fairly. Without Kiera and Soren receiving preference if the other gets in, they will be separated.  St. Paul schools do not offer universal Pre-K and the limited classrooms they have are over-subscribed.  The district reserves the majority of the available Pre-K spots for children who are English language learners or have an Individualized Education Plan (IEP), among other criteria.  Kiera has an IEP because of her speech delay, which means she pretty much guaranteed a spot. Soren does not have an IEP.  

There's a happy resolution - Soren and Kiera will be given the "twins preference". After talking ourselves in circles, the director suddenly agreed to granting them the same preference as biological twins and I got it in writing later.