Back to Screwel

Here we are, on the final countdown to the first day of school. The title of this chapter in the moving adventures of our move will be called: New Schools for Everyone! And the First Time in Six Months We Have Gone To School! We are coming from the tiny, warm, friendly pond of a charter school to the huge, cold and unfamiliar ocean of public school, and I for one am feeling a bit like a vulnerable little guppy. There are over 900 kids in the elementary school alone! I have no idea how many are at the junior high, but our school in Logan had maybe 350 kids total, if you combine both the elementary and the middle schools. So this will be a change of pace, to say the least.

And in spite of my guppiness, I have already had to take on the counseling office at Duncan's high school. They don't seem to want to register him very bad. I called the district in March, to find out what I needed to do to get the special ed ball rolling for him. They told me he would just go to his regular high school, and to contact the school to get him registered. So in May, I got out my fat little folder full of Duncan information and we went in and met with the registrar, who told us that they don't register any new students until August. Odd, but whatever. We also met with Duncan's counselor, who said he would be in touch with the district to get some testing set up for his new IEP, which is due in October.

So here it is August, I took my fat folder and went back to the school, and now they are telling me I can't register him until the first day of school. Oh, and by the way, since he is a special ed kid, they will need an assessment from the district before they will accept him at the high school.

Huh??

Wouldn't that have been nice to know back in MARCH, when I started this whole process? Isn't that something the district might have bothered to fill me in about, and wouldn't MARCH have been a better time to take care of it, before the rush of the first week of school?

We are trying to remain positive here, but it is this kind of runaround that drives me crazy about public schools. It is also what drove me to a charter school 7 years ago. When Mr. Top Administrator and Mrs. District Coordinator are mysterious entities in another building clear across town, it is easy for the school to just blame them for everything, and let little things like, oh, registration, slip through the cracks. But when the one and only head guy has his office right next to the secretary/registrar/receptionist, and there isn't anybody else to stick the blame on, things tend to run much more efficiently. Not to mention the money saved by doing away with all those useless important people.

That is called privatization of education, I am a fan, and I am now stepping down from my soapbox.

And I have a meeting with Mrs. District Coordinator on Friday morning.