Educational Confusion

Adams?????

Lincoln Heights?????

Moran Prairie?????

Last week a bomb got dropped on me. I was standing at the bus stop with Chad when my neighbor and her three children joined us. My neighbor asked what I thought of the letter. "What letter?" I innocently asked. "This letter about changing the school boundaries." She angrily replied while whipping out an official letter from the school.

My heart stopped and my breathing became heavy. Great, now what is going on I was thinking. She proceeded to tell me that the bus would no longer be available to our neighborhood to take the kids to Lincoln Heights. The bus would now be coming from Adams Elementary to take our kids there.

Apparently this is a Domino affect from the closing of Pratt Elementary. While there is still plenty of room at Lincoln Heights all the busing will be north of us, and they don't want to send a bus down south to our neighborhood. Hum, you would have thought they would have thought about that years ago! For crying out loud, our neighborhood has always been out of the way. There is a bus stop to Moran Prairie just up the street from our house - just the other side of 37th. We thought that if there were going to be any boundary changes that we would be going to Moran Prairie - since all the surrounding neighborhoods go there and the bus would just have to take a small detour up to our neighborhood.

So by the time my neighbor explained the letter I was just as fuming mad as her. I was also mad that this happened after I had already registered Halle early to guarantee morning kindergarten, and after they had just invited her to a Kindergarten Roundup at Lincoln Heights and she had met her new teacher, received a Lincoln Heights T-shirt and thought she was following in the footsteps of her big brother. And then that I was the only family in the neighborhood that did not receive a letter. (I contacted the Principal from Lincoln Heights who send out the letter and I have still not received one!) I feel so cheated from all the time I spent volunteering and all the money I donated to "our" school.

I also feel bad for Chad, for the third year in a row he will be going to a different school. The only school he went to for two years in a row was Ferris Preschool. He will also have a new speech teacher for the third time. Don't they know that kids with communication disfluencies (stuttering) need consistancy and structure. That all these changes are what can set up a bad episode for his talking?!


So for several days I was in a bad mood and my mind could not stop thinking about what to do. Do I drive my kids to Lincoln Heights, so they can stay at the school they thought they would be going to. Do I try to get in at Moran Prairie and then drive 5 different times a day in different directions with preschool, kindergarten, and 1st grade? Do I let my kids go to Adams - a school right by the smoking section of Ferris, surrounded by polluting traffic, and in a really old building?


I know everyone out there would think it was a no brainer - that I should go to Moran Prairie. But after talking it out with Chris and praying about it - the only time I feel okay and peaceful is when I think about sending my kids to Adams. It is not what I really want to do, and I still don't like the location - but I feel that this is all for a reason and everything will work out okay. I think about Moran Prairie - a great school, and where my kids would know some of their church friends - but it just doesn't feel right.


My neighbor and I are having a tour of Adams with the Principal there tomorrow. I hope this will help with my attitude and help me come to grips with what I am feeling the answer is.

I know this is not the worse thing in the world - there are plenty of people I know suffering with really serious problems - but I am glad that I can have the spirit to guide me in these difficult decisions and I trust that everything will work out because of the feelings I have had.