(no subject)

[felicula]

Yesterday, I finally got in touch with the parent liason for the magnet school we're most hoping to get Aidan into. What struck me most was that their premise as a magnet school is that half of all students admitted are english as a second language students. Despite this, the percentage of students passing the tests in language arts and math are both well above the state average. Most city schools are abyssmally below that. Even better, we made an appointment to visit the school today.

Shortly after nine, we were circling the place like vultures. Parking isn't the best, but if he gets in, he'll be bussed. The school itself is only about 200 kids in Kindergarten through sixth grade. We got to peek in the Kindergarten room, where middle school kids were volunteering to work with the kids as part of their community service. There were three teachers and a peer professional, with the class broken into three home groups. the class could hold up to 40 kids, but there were less than that in the current class.

I was impressed that it was a small school. It made me smile even more to get to see the Chorus practicing. The music/drama/creative expression teacher stopped what they were working on learning - an arabic song and dance in arabic - to have them perform a song about Harriet Tubman from memory for us.

The parent liason was very helpful and friendly. The trick is, it is very competative to get in. Half of the studends are ESL, and they have sibling preference as well. So there aren't so many slots left for the average everyday person applying there. I don't see that as a reason not to apply, though. If there's even a small chance of Aidan getting in there, I want to take it. It's a lottery system, so there's at least a chance.

It also made me happy that while I was discussing the diversity of their school, the parent liason mentioned one of the schools in our zone that I have in mind for one of my "runner up" choices. I really only like two of the schools in our zone. We get three choices of those, though. At the workshop we attended, we were told that applying to a magnet school wouldn't use up any of those three choices, but be separate from that.

I'm still going to have to be calling the processing center next week to get our address and name in their database and get applications mailed to us. I'm never fond of this kind of phone-runaround, but I suppose I should be thankful in a way. If it wasn't the year they're working on switching the system around, we would have already passed the deadline for applying to the magnet school. So due to the delay on the administrative level, the application process hasn't even started.


What Usage of the Word Fuck are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Comments

[phoenixsong]

Yay on school stuff s:) I definitely think it's neat that they were doing multicultural-type things, especially that young. Sounds like the type of stuff most other schools wouldn't touch until at least high school, if ever -- at which point, interest is so small it'd be nearly impossible for it to make any impact on the majority of students.

[blackfelicula.livejournal.com]

It makes me inclined to think that the overall diversity and high percentage of students for whom english is not their first language contributes to that. I'm crossing my fingers that Aidan makes it in!

[kolys.livejournal.com]

I know that the folks who are in charge at School Without Walls speak very very highly of that school. They mentioned it a number of times in the school planning meeting today.