Daddy and Daughter Dance and a great Fundraising idea!

The girls' school has this wonderful fundraising method that takes the place of selling candy and
wrapping paper. It's called Great Gatherings. Maybe this is something everyone has heard of with school age children, but this was a first for me!

The idea is that teachers/ parents/ families of the kids that attend the school offer a "gathering" and set a price to attend. The host donates their time and any financial outlay for the event. All the proceeds then go to the school. Gatherings include anything from a group hike, kite-boarding lessons,  to mother- daughter tea, wine & canvas, beer & brats, and sushi & sake evenings (this last one we just hosted!) Some are adults only, some kids only, and some are for the entire fam.

In November, there was a big bash for parents only. You bought tickets for $25 and got your pick of whatever food you wanted from 4 food trucks and the opportunity to sign up for a Great Gathering or ten of them. This is such a great idea for providing creative opportunities for families to get to know one another and to decrease any financial outlay for the school in order to raise funds.

One of the Great Gatherings we signed up for was the Daddy Daughter Dance. It was for K-3rd graders and their Dad (or any other special male guest, i.e. Grandpa or Uncle). L & S had so much fun getting ready for their big night. We borrowed some fancy dresses from cousin Luna and curled their hair and even put on some colored lip gloss and eye shadow, fancy!!  It was a bit of a battle to convince them not to wear their dress-up 'high heels' (I won in the end). They had a blast making special tiaras and wands, eating fabulous cupcakes, drinking pink lemonade and of course, lots and lots of dancing.

Dad and Grandpa were fantastic dates! I couldn't help but volunteer for the event so I could take pictures:)

The Kindergarten Decision Part II: Charter school lotteries

Now that the decision was made to send the summer baby twins at 5 as opposed to 6 we had to start thinking about schools. 

We applied to our number one choice school. It was a desirable charter school. We had one twin accepted and one was placed on the wait list, she was number 130. Here are the details:

We weren't sure exactly where we would be living after the big move back to Minnesota from Maryland, so we had to explore several options for kindergarten. We knew that, in general, the public schools in St. Paul and surrounding areas were pretty good so we nixed the idea of private school pretty quickly. After all, one of the reasons we moved back to this area was for the schools!

So we applied to the St. Paul public school system using my parents address and then I started exploring a variety of charter school options; this way, it ultimately wouldn't matter  where we moved. There are quite a few out there! I narrowed it down to a few immersion schools and a couple schools that are based on the classical form of education.

Now, let's talk about charter schools. It's good to know that a popular charter school will use a lottery when determining which children receive spots in any given year and grade. This is generally a random procedure unless you have more than one child. In this case you receive sibling preference. This normally occurs when an older child is already attending the school and then their younger sibling enrolls. The younger sibling will be bumped to the top of the list due to this preference. This is required by law for Minnesota charter schools.

So if one child is already enrolled and the sibling wants to get in, no problem. But would if both the siblings are enrolling the at the same time? What is not specified in the law, is is what qualifies as 'enrolled'.

In the case of a popular charter school with many more applicants that they can accept, we learned that some parents of older children sent in applications for them (with no intention of them actually attending) along with their younger sibling (who they did want to have go to that school) just so the kindergartners would get an extra chance of getting in.

Since this happened (I can't imagine all too many times), the policy at a small number of charter schools was changed to dictate that sibling preference does not come into play unless the sibling referred to is actually attending the school; meaning, if they just receive a spot and say they are attending, this does not count. They must actually attend the first day of class. So the way the school defines enrolled is physically present. Now I don't totally disagree with this methodology, especially if families appear to be working the system.

Here is my problem with this scenario. This policy is the same at these schools for twins. I do understand the attempt here at preventing families to misuse the system to get one of their kids into their desired school. The system works fine for families who currently have older siblings attending, then the younger one pretty much gets in. But because of a handful of scenarios where parents decided they had intentions for one of their children to get in and wanted to use their other kids as a booster, this policy was set.

So back to my problem. I have twins. I chose my number one charter school, which happened to be the number one school for many other folks. We applied; one got in and one was on the wait list...she was 130 on the wait list to be exact. I called, I was told that due to the policy we had to wait until the first day of school after the other twin showed up. I fought this. There was even a special policy that stated that families with twins, where one was in and one not, would have to wait until the first day of school for sibling preference because they want to make sure that we were attending. First off, how many parents of twins would send their twins to different schools? I can't imagine this number being significant. For us, it was especially stressful since the school was dictating our general location in the twin cities metro. I fought it and I lost. I found out that there were 2 other sets of twins in kindergarten that were in the exact same position we were. None of us were happy.

Fast forward: we go in on the first day and we got the call that afternoon that Lucy was accepted; moreover, all the sets of twins were in by the end of the first week. Naturally, this was great for everyone.  

However, I spent 7 months stressing out about it; Is Lucy going to get in? How long do I wait to see? Do I pull Stella if Lucy doesn't get in? Should I keep Stella there by herself and then be guaranteed a spot in 1st grade for Lucy? Where should Lucy go? If they go to different schools, what kind of logistical nightmare will that be? Do they have the same school breaks? Do we buy are house in the area closer to the charter school (that goes till 12th grade) or not?
I hope there may be something I can do to prevent this from happening again to another family, and I am working on it. I had initially found out that this school had set their own policies on sibling preference using their own definition of enrollment; they were not breaking any laws so the Dept of Education would have no place to intervene. There is a general sibling preference rule for all charter schools. I know this is a niche problem, but we'll see if we can make a change!

My solution? Well of course I would love the policy to be different for twins. If one gets in and you accept enrollment, the other one should get a spot, right? On the flip side, I do understand the problem here for charter schools. What if families are accepting spots at multiple schools? They have the potential of losing money; if a family accepts a spot and then doesn't show up, it may be a lot more difficult to fill that spot after school starts.

So how does a family say to a school "yes we are coming, and we really mean it!" One solution would be to have families place a deposit when they are accepting their spot and if they show up they get the deposit back, if they don't they lose it. The big problem with this is that it would never fly in a public charter school because it may alienate families who couldn't afford said deposit. I will keep brainstorming! Any ideas?