Posts Tagged ‘kindergarten’

The Right Decision

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

I often second guess my decisions (really, who doesn’t?).  I usually hem and haw, and don’t ever want to decide in case I guess wrong.  You can ask my husband — it drives him bananas.  However, that being said, I know we made the right decision in sending Madison to private school.

As many of you may remember, this is a decision we really did struggle with.  It sucks paying high property taxes and then have to pay tuition too.  That being said, I am not happy with our local school district.  I’ve been trying to find out how many kids are in a class since last August.  They refuse to tell me.  The school tells me to the call the district, and the district refuses to tell me.  According to the referedum paperwork (said referendum has failed 4 times now), there is up to 34 kids in a class.  Oh yeah, and no teacher’s aides either.  The public school also has no music or art classes.  Kindergarten is also only 2.5 hrs a day.  Would you send your child there?

We opted to pay the tuition and send Madison to private school.  There she has gym, computer, art, and music once a week.  It is also full day.  We knew that going in and were happy with it.  What we didn’t count on was how much she was going to love it.  We also didn’t count on in the first 5 weeks of school, she would be learning to read already.  She has 20 sight words she can do!  She also learned the sign of the cross, the glory be prayer (I don’t know what the name of the prayer), and the our father!  She is terrified to get a yellow or red light (which is how the teacher keeps them in line).  She loves her teacher, and she loves being in school.

We recently went to her open house Tuesday night.  We learned that her teacher had been married in the church there and had sent her own children to this school.  That makes me feel good.  It means she also is invested in the school and the church.

Since the first week of school, I have been a peace with my decision.  I knew it was the right one after seeing how happy she was and how much she has been learning.

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Public vs Private School

Friday, September 19th, 2008

If you follow me on twitter, you will know what this post is going to be about.  If you don’t, I’ll do a quick explanation of what’s going on.

I live in the Ridgeland School District 122.  We have had a school referendum fail twice.  After the last time it failed, my school district cut all of the music and art programs and supposedly the after school programs too.  After the last referendum failed, I had posted about it on my blog and had quite a response from both sides of the referendum.  However, here I sit, and Madison will go to kindergarten next year, and we have to decide where she is going to go.

I always said my kids would go to public school.  I went to public school and I turned out fine.  LOL  However, my class size was never higher than 25 kids and that was in high school too.  Since I have no experience with private school, I am reaching out to my readers to give me their opinion.

Here’s what I know for sure — there is no art class and no music class.  Instead it is being “facilitated in the classrooms” — whatever that means.  I had a huge concern regarding this “everyday math” I have been hearing about.  However, my public school is not teaching that.  Her class size would be 22 – 30 kids with only one teacher. In private school, she would have gym, music, art, and computer once a week.  Her class size would be around 15 – 19 kids with one teacher and a teachers aide.

Oh and let me add, the referendum is again destined to fail.  The administration gave them 10% raises over the summer!

If you were in my shoes, what would you do?  Public or private?

Edited to add:  Homeschooling is not an option.  Madison does way better learning when it isn’t me.  I can’t believe the amount of things she learned in preschool already.

Edited again 9/23:  The school principal will no longer answer my questions.  All my questions now have to go through the main district office.  According to the District 122 Ridgeland office, there is no music or art at all.  No classes will go over thirty.  However, they will not create another class unless there are 60 kids between 2 classes (I hope that makes sense), so it could happen that both classes could be 29 kids, and they would not make a new class.  They had no idea what the district was going to do if the referendum fails a third time.  In the past, it was threatened that one of the grade schools was to be closed and/or they would go to grade school centers.  When I asked about that, I was told that was up to the school board.

Also, the raise I talked about was given to the superintendent and the assistant superintendents.

Also the district was asked to put their finances online.  26 other local districts have.  Mine has refused and has publically stated that in a local newspaper.

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