We moved into the new house on a Tuesday and Willa started kindergarten the following Monday. Life was crazy! I remember trying to pack all her school supplies in a certain school supply box, but then of course I'd come across something I'd forgotten and then that would get packed in a different box. Then, finding that special box somewhere in the house or garage after the move took some work. Suffice it to say, the classroom is short one box of large Ziploc bags that I was supposed to donate - but at least they got the extra paper, pencils, glue, and scissors.
For the past year or so I've thought about where to send Willa to school. The school by the old house was a title I school, there were several apartments and section 8 housing zoned for the school. So even though we'd heard the teachers and principal were excellent, the student body left a lot to be desired and the school was not a 5 Star School (which is a Nevada rubric). But, we had a good friend teaching there and I knew she would look out for Willa. I think it would have been fine, the kids on our street all went to school there and most people I'd talked to had had a good experience there.
Las Vegas does not have great schools, I think a large part of it is the transiency. When a lot of the population works in the service industry, people move around a lot, shows on the Strip open and close, etc. There isn't the same kind of permanency you'd find elsewhere. Where I grew up, people live in their houses 30+ years and send their kids to the same school and the same teachers are all there. My parents have been in their house 40 years and have most of their original neighbors. Here, even among church members, living in the same house 15 years is pretty rare. In addition, Clark County is one of the largest school districts in the country. They haven't figured out how to split it because the city of Henderson and the area of Summerlin could each be their own district, but then all those high-income tax dollars would be cut off from funding the poorer areas of the city. It's just a big tangled web. So there are good schools around, but there are lots of not good schools.
During this time I needed to decide which school, we were also unsure about whether we would get the house. The school in the new area was rated better, but still not 5 Stars, and what if we didn't get the house? I decided to put Willa on the list for two different charter schools. The first one, was by the old house. I only did that one because 95% of our old ward attended it, people in our ward had written the charter, opened the school, etc. But, I really wasn't excited about this school. It is very strict and I think they miss the point a lot of the time. For example, they assign up to an hour of homework a day for kindergarteners. One of their reasons for assigning homework is so that kids won't be idle. Seriously. That's their real reason. The school is really into building character, but for me it is a totally wrong-headed approach. One of my little piano students came to lesson. I asked how school was and she said it was good, but there were new words they couldn't say. I asked what the words were (thinking they were something like poop, or boo-boo butt). She said, "Well, because we are all at different levels, we can't say 'This is impossible.' or 'Piece of cake.'" Okay.... so what words can you say if something is hard? She said you could say, "This is exciting!"
I told Ryan that night that that school was like
1984. Words have meaning and we should allow kids to express that meaning and their feelings. It's like Doublespeak to force kids to say "This is exciting" about a hard math problem instead of honestly saying, "I'm having trouble with this, I find it hard." I also feel like it's a Socialist education system where they want to equalize everyone, they don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. In real life, we all have different abilities, and kids need to learn that. Any way, I digress. As a caveat, I learned from another friend who teaches there that none of that word stuff was school policy, but must have been that specific teacher (who was also in the ward). For me, it was just a sign of bad teaching. I put Willa's name on the raffle to get in mainly because people in the ward (who wrote the charter) told me to and I decided to have options.
The second charter school was called Doral Academy. It's an arts-integrated curriculum and very popular. They've had to open up a new campus almost every other year to keep up with the demand. For example, my harp students went to the Doral by our old house. Last year for that school, there were 3,000 applicants for six spots. And the only reason those six slots were available is because two families moved out of state, so no one was dropping out of the school. The only real way to get into Doral is if you somehow squeeze in with the new kindergarten class (something that was still hard because all the younger siblings of students get seats first) or if they build another school. Luckily for us, they were building another school so I put Willa's name on the list for the new school, and two of the other Doral campuses and she ended up getting into the new school. It's a random lottery for all the schools.
Now I actually felt like I had a dilemma. She got into this great charter school that people rave about and that has a reputation in the city. However, I'm suspicious of charter schools in general. They don't have as much oversight as the public schools, they have a smaller budget so they often have new teachers because veteran teachers would be taking a pay cut to leave the district, etc. I also didn't know if I wanted Willa to go to a school that wasn't in her neighborhood because I like the idea of going to school with neighbor friends and church friends. However, because the school system in Las Vegas is so patchy, a lot of the kids don't go to the neighborhood school anyway.
On the other hand, I felt like I HAD to take this spot at Doral. People were dying for spots at this school and if we didn't take this slot, it was likely that we'd never get in again through the lottery. Lots of people see Doral as an alternative to private schools that they didn't want to afford anymore, so a fair amount of the students are coming from Montessori or other private schools. So even if I didn't know that much about the curriculum and exactly why it was so much better than the public schools, was it okay to just follow the crowd and everyone else's opinion that it was :)? Also, it has a middle school and high school on the same campus (in different buildings). It would be especially nice to stick with Doral through middle school where the parents are a little more involved, the kids have to wear uniforms, and you can kind of alleviate some of stresses of those awful middle school years. I also liked that they have a STEAM program for the upper schools. Instead of just STEM, they add Arts into the curriculum so it's balanced. I feel really strongly about being an educated person instead of just knowing facts. Learning about the arts and understanding the arts helps our logical reasoning skills and really gives a broader education in the long run. Lastly, a friend in our old ward is a veteran and award winning teacher. She actually got recruited out of the public schools two years ago, by Adelson, which is this very elite Jewish private school (recognize the same Sheldon Adelson?). She knew teachers going to Doral as well as the superintendent. She was extremely impressed and said that if she ever left Adelson, Doral is where she would most consider going.
In the end, I went with the flow and we settled on Doral. The new campus is beautiful, it's the last development before you get to Red Rock, it has a beautiful view of the red mountains from the playground. Here is Meet the Teacher night a few days before school started. Her teacher's name is Mrs. Chevalier and it's her first year teaching, eek.
First day of school. She's gotten so sassy with her poses! Willa has been really excited about kindergarten for the past year, talking about it almost every day as we would drive past the neighborhood school. Unfortunately, one day this summer she was talking about it and I said, "You know, it's going to be long. It's going to be longer than day camp." She had just come from a day camp with June that was four hours long... Whoops, that was the wrong thing to say. From that point on, she never talked about kindergarten again. The night before school she was a little excited, but also nervous about the length of the school day and we had to kind of pump it up for her. I feel bad that I ruined it a little for her.
Lining up the first day with her class. It was very sweet and she managed a cute smile and really was looking forward to it. Some of the kids were actually quite sad and it was hard to see them crying and hugging their parents.
Hmmm...not so excited about the second day. It's rough getting into a schedule. Last year, all of Clark County went to full day kindergarten. A few of the charters still do half day, but ours is not one of them. I wish they would do a five or six hour day, which would be more than the 2 1/2 of half day, but less than the 8+ of full day.
Lining up the second day.
Her school day runs from 8:30-3:19. We leave about 8:00 a.m. so that
she has time to play on the playground before school. The parking and
driving situation at the school is pretty awful. Since it's a charter
school, there are no buses and it's not a neighborhood school for most
kids so there aren't a lot of walkers. That means there are a LOT of
drivers. We are lucky to get home around 3:45 most days. If I get there
super early, wait in line outside the gate for 10-15 minutes, and am
first to pick her up out of her classroom, I can get home by 3:35,
wahoo! Still, I find that it's usually easiest to be five minutes late
and not have any wait at all to get into the school, but then I hit a
little more traffic on the way out. Still, I think 8:00-4:00 pm is a little much for a 5/6 year old. I keep salivating on the little neighborhood school down the street and dream a little about going there. I can get door to drop-off for Willa in 12 minutes depending on school traffic, but then I think about just driving two minutes to the neighborhood school.... Anyway, I like Doral for now. It's a nice place. I don't have anything to compare it to and I'm sure she'd be fine at the local elementary, but I really like having the option to go there for middle school. I also like that a charter school can be more flexible and less bureaucratic with a student or a teacher. If I really had issues with her teacher or something going on, I feel like I would have more of a voice with the principal and there would be more options to solve the problem with less red tape.
It took about two or more weeks for Willa to really settle in and not cry about going to school. There were definitely lots of tears the second day. I feel like we don't have a lot of free time to practice piano and get other stuff done. It feels sad to get home and have it almost dinnertime. I've been trying to get practicing done before school, but that's difficult too. She just doesn't have a lot of down time and so I feel bad taking some of that precious down time and scheduling it for piano or another activity. Still, they do a lot of fun things in class and have lots of specials and breaks so she does enjoy school quite a bit now and it's not all sitting straight at a desk. She's getting to know her classmates and gets very silly with them.
