Education

Three Crimson Leaves (C) wants to know when her mother will stop 'visiting all these schools for her' and start playing with her again

LBD assists with application writing

Oh, the weight of this word. I hesitate to post about this topic for oh so many reasons, but not mentioning it on this blog would be like failing to mention that I lost a limb recently. Ok, not really, but suffice it to say that that the search for kindergarten has taken up every ounce of 'spare time' I might have, and then some.

Go ahead, commence rolling your eyes. It IS ridiculous. But let me defend myself just a little. We have a lottery system in SF. There is no such thing as your 'neighborhood school.' There is visiting 30 schools, ranking them, and then getting a spot in your 15th choice. Oh, and if you have twins you might get one in your 15th and one in your 16th. On opposite sides of the city. And then there are the private schools. Same sex, co-ed, in SF, take a bus across the bridge, small, big, religious or not (oh, and that whole $$$$ thing) And then there are all the 'neighborhood' schools you could attend outside the city. But do you move north or south or east? Do you want a school with 2 kindergartens or 7? How much does diversity matter to you? Do you want the kids to go to the same school k-2, k-5, or k-8? And oh yeah, do we even want to live there?

If I admitted how much time and energy I have spent on this issue you would stop reading this blog now. So let's just suffice it to say that I now know a LOT about education in the Bay Area. And I have to admit it has been an amazing process at least in the sense of giving me an idea of how different learning can be. But it is also a bit stressful to have absolutely NO idea where our kids will attend school next year (not to mention where we might be sleeping at night). Like anything it life, I'm assuming it will be be a mixture of luck and making the right tradeoffs to end up at the right answer.