Grace Period?

This school year has barely begun and already I'm worrying about where my ten year old daughter, S,  will be attending middle school. She is my baby, and in my mind, she just isn’t ready for the typical middle school experience, complete with mean girls and acne and periods and bullying, not to mention six different teachers and changing classes and lockers. My older daughter is in seventh grade at the closest middle school, and she comes home almost daily with a story of fist fights or make out sessions in the janitor’s closet or the weird girl getting doused with pig’s blood at the school dance. She has adjusted surprisingly well; she found her niche and is maintaining excellent grades. My younger daughter, however, doesn’t seem to handle change as easily. She still hasn’t made that many friends since she left her private school two years ago, and the one close friend she has made isn’t allowed to come over and play, either because we're white or because we aren’t Christian.

The alternatives to regular public middle school are limited in my town. There’s an excellent Catholic school, but she refuses to learn catechism at the same time she learns Hebrew, so that’s out. There’re also a few magnet schools, but honestly, we bought the house in which we live because the middle and high schools are allegedly so good. And then there’s the charter school.

The charter school is small, focused heavily on leadership, community, and academics, with small single gender classes. They insist on uniforms and eschew lockers. They don’t have arts or music or sports teams or electives or a fucking cafeteria, but they do have excellent test scores and creative teachers. Do I think it’s the perfect school for my daughter? No, but perfect doesn’t exist. It is, however, nice to have options.

I attempted to get my older daughter enrolled in the same charter school two years in a row, but no luck. It’s all based on a “lottery” because the state law provides for equal opportunity for admission to charter schools. That being said, the school still has other requirements for entry, including an application, attendance at a mandatory informational meeting, and after the lottery, a screening with the student, parents, and educators, all designed to make sure the school is a good fit for your child. I appreciate that, really. Why go through all the trouble to get your kid in some special school only to change your mind because you didn’t know about the uniforms and the 1:30 dismissal on Friday?

For E, my older daughter, I attended the meeting twice, sitting through the chairperson’s historical information about the school, the stern explanation of curriculum by the teachers, and the registrar’s specific instructions, an hour wasted on what could be easily read on their website from the comfort of my couch. I jumped through all the hoops, completed the application process, and waited for the lottery. The first year, she was 152 on a waiting list for sixty openings. The second year, she rose to 15 on the waiting list. I don’t even know if they had openings. Needless to say, she adjusted well to our zoned middle school and is doing swimmingly.

A friend of mine who has a daughter the same age as S reminded me it was time to attend the meeting for the charter school. I honestly didn’t give it any thought, since the idea of having to take my kids to two different public middle schools seems a bit on the indulgent side. But I would hate to be accused of not treating my daughters fairly, so I agreed to go with her to my third informational meeting in as many years. Why? Because parents are required to attend  the meeting any time they apply for a child, even if another child already attends that school or if they've attended in the past. Again, it has something to do with thinking about what is best for your child and not taking the cookie cutter approach to education, or some such bullshit.

My friend and I met at the W Road Christian Church, where the meeting was held. Nothing screams public school like meeting about it in a church, let alone one that refuses to specify a denomination. We walked into the sanctuary, clutching our completed applications, and found two seats together. The room was just five degrees shy of Hell, an attempt to make church goers reflect on what direction their lives of sin will take them. For us school meeting parents, well, we just drifted into that red-faced, near comatose place, the one where you move beyond “this room is hot” and head straight for bobbing and swaying in your chair.

The meeting was the same meeting I sat through two other times. I learned nothing new, not that I expected to. After daydreaming about the choir section, which was really cool in a clam shell kind of way, I studied the other parents and their children, judging them and also my chances of getting my daughter in the school. Mostly, I was just waiting for my little slip of paper to prove that I had attended.

After the meeting adjourned, my friend and I had one of those brief conversations about whether or not to ask them to accept our applications. At no point in the past hour did they mention taking applications at the meeting, which I pointed out to my friend. She was convinced if she explained to them she had the application all ready to go, they would make an exception for her and happily take it.

We walked up to a couple of teachers who were standing behind a display of textbooks. I stood slightly behind my friend as she mustered up the nerve to ask them if they would accept her paperwork. The younger of the two teachers launched into a polite, indirect spiel about why they don’t take applications at the mandatory meeting, going on and on about how every child is different and to process the information you heard to make the best possible decision for your child’s education. And then he said, “It’s kind of like a waiting period.”

That’s when I opened my mouth.

“Oh, a waiting period? You mean, like if we wanted to have an abortion?”

That’s what came out.

The two teachers stared at me, slack jawed. My friend knit her eyebrows together and grabbed my forearm, leading me out of the building.

“Well, now you’ve done it,” she said. “You can kiss your daughter’s chance of getting in that school goodbye.”

“Nah-uh,” I replied, “because they don’t know who I am. They don’t have this, remember?” I waved my application in her face.

“Well, if there’s a way to kick you out before you even get in, I’m sure they’ll find it. Jesus, and in a church, no less. We’re lucky the whole building didn’t burst in flames.”

“At least I didn’t say anything about a waiting period for buying a gun,” I said.

“You think that’s worse?” she said, rolling her eyes at me.

Next time, if there is next time, my husband is going to that damn meeting. Better yet, my daughter can go to the same school as her sister. Those teachers hear stuff like that every day. Hell, they probably have kids giving each other abortions in the locker room.  

Maybe that’s why they aren’t allowed to take coat hangers to school.