It’s that time of year : Lasso the kids and the registration forms it’s preschool and kindergarten roundup time! Today we have guest-blogger Amy Jo Lennartson sharing her pre-K panic.  (I need to find a brown paper bag -just thinking about this almost makes me hyperventilate.)

With kindergarten packets arriving in the mail, it was yet another reminder the choice we have to make — soon.

When we lived in Minneapolis, I blamed the City on the anxiety I felt when people would ask –when our boys were infants — where they would go to school. And they didn’t mean preschool, because of course, I was already on a waiting list for that, right?

I had no idea. Absolutely no clue. This wasn’t covered in the “What to Expect When You Weren’t Expecting Twins” book. As people rattled off friendly advice, opinions and suggestions, I was overwhelmed. Don’t kids just go to the nearest school? Of course, silly, they could — if that school wasn’t closing due to budget cuts. So that left a buffet of options, so many in fact, I’ve blocked them all out.

But then, when the boys were two, and just as we seriously starting to explore our options, Husband got a new job in a smaller community. This was great for two reasons: a different house meant a legitimate reason to shop at IKEA and I could get out of all this school choice stuff, because a small community would mean the simplicity that comes with less choice.

Which of course isn’t true at all. Turns out there are as many choices as children have needs no matter where you live.

It’s dizzying, especially for those making this choice for the first time: we could homeschool, apply to the way-across-town charter school where all the cool kids go, check out the private schools (which may or may not accept kids with special education needs, which we need) and apparently, if all else fails, send them to the public elementary school three blocks away.

But wait. There’s more. We could also do half and half: we could do the mornings at the brick and mortar school and the afternoons doing public school online from home. Or vice-versa. Who knew? We do, because I made the mistake of going to an informational meeting about this.

And aside from school choice, there are family values and lifestyles decisions: how important is that your kids attend a neighborhood school? What if you feel stuck in your neighborhood and don’t want your kids to go to school there? How important is it that your kids are friends with kids who have parents who you consider “like minded”? What if homeschooling is your first choice, but you can’t afford to have a parent home to do that? How does all this balance with younger and older siblings, geography and work schedules? Is there one right place? And how much does it really matter?

We aren’t sure what we’re going to do. We know what makes sense, but we can’t say with much confidence that it feels like the right choice. I am, however, confident that regardless of where they go to kindergarten, they’ll end up in therapy, which I suppose I should start researching now, too.

How did you make your preschool/kindergarten decision?

I know this post focused on kindergarten but also wanted to pass along this new website for researching preschools in your area.  Savvysource.comÂ

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 8:44 am and is filed under Guest Bloggers, Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.