Lucy gets a Virtue Shout Out!

Lucy got a virtue shout out at her school for Fortitude (which is a pretty cool deal for the kids)!

Lucy and Stella are in first grade this year. Their school uses the classical model of education. Part of this model includes the kids learning about (and hopefully displaying) some core virtues. The virtues they focus on in K-5 include:

• Justice (respect, friendship, kindness, generosity, fairness)
  Justice means treating others with respect and taking responsibility for their well-being; fairness.
• Temperance (order, courtesy, self-control, patience, obedience)
  Temperance is about mastering ourselves for the sake of the happiness of those around us. It is about acting the right way at the right time.
• Prudence (honesty, wisdom, integrity, gratitude, humility, care)
  Prudence is about having sound judgment and making sound choices. It is about being thoughtful.
• Fortitude (courage, optimism, perseverance, good citizenship, loyalty)
  Fortitude means having the courage to face challenges and obstacles; persevering when things get tough.

A teacher or staff member that notices a student (or scholar as they are affectionately called in-house) will give them a "virtue shout-out". Their name goes on a list in the School of Grammar (lower school, elementary) hallway and they are recognized in a monthly virtue assembly. Out of 500ish kids in the their school maybe 20-25 will get a shout out each month.

In addition the virtue assembly is hosted by a grade every month- and this month, it was first grade. So both the girls sang with their classes songs about temperance. Stella's class sang about some sloppy goops who don't have table manners and Lucy's class sang about some mischievous kittens. Lucy is quite the socialite and entertainer (during class time), so we were proud of her when she received this acknowledgement of some virtuous behavior in a challenging situation! She had her named called and was asked to stand in front of the entire lower school along with all us parent people. Good job Luciana!

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?

The Kindergarten Decision Part 1: Should I send my twins with summer birthdays at 5 or 6?

While these events happened last year, I never recorded the experience, so here it is!

The twins have summer birthdays. So we as parents got the 'joy' of making the decision on whether or not to send the girls to Kindergarten when they just turn 5 (so they would be the youngest) or when they just turned 6 (so they would be the oldest).

I battled with this decision. I battled for several years actually.

The thoughts running through my mind were things like:
If I send them at an early 5:

• Will they be intellectually ready?
• Will they be socially ready?
• Maybe I should keep them home for another year, why rush it?
• If I have the choice why would I make them be the youngest ones in their class? Isn't being older, cooler?
• All their friends will get their license first! 
• They will start college too early- won't I want them around for another year?
• Will they be immature? Small? 
• I won't have to pay for care
• They may progress faster and be more challenged

If I send them at an early 6: 

•  Will I be holding them back academically?
• Will they be bored?
• Will they just seem too old for their class?
• Will they be huge?
• I will get to have them around for another year, but I would have to pay for care
• They will be the 'cool' older kids, they will get their license first etc!

I read research on the topic, made pros and cons lists, and drove myself crazy. Then I decided that I should just decide. I decided they were going to go when they were 5. Now ironically, most of the research and public opinion out there is that if a parent is questioning their decision, that most folks never regret waiting. However, as a wise person once told me, sometimes you just have to go with your gut. My gut said 5. I then did the non-scholarly thing and sought out research to back up my decision... and not the other side of this internal argument.

Check out what Maria Konnikova had to say about it in The New Yorker, Youngest Kid, Smartest Kid : 

"While earlier studies have argued that redshirted (red-shirted meaning holding them back a year so the child is older and potentially bigger) children do better both socially and academically—citing data on school evaluations, leadership positions, and test scores—more recent analyses suggest that the opposite may well be the case: the youngest kids, who barely make the age cutoff but are enrolled anyway, ultimately end up on top—not their older classmates. When a group of economists followed Norwegian children born between 1962 and 1988, until the youngest turned eighteen, in 2006, they found that, at age eighteen, children who started school a year later had I.Q. scores that were significantly lower than their younger counterparts. Their earnings also suffered: through age thirty, men who started school later earned less." 

So since I ran with my decision to send them at an early 5 (knowing if it was an utter failure I could still sent them to Kindergarten again- albeit at a different school).

Furthermore, in February of last year, I found out that we "won" the lottery of for the Charter school of our choice (pretty scary odds with 40 spots available after sibling preference, and 400 applicants). So if I delayed the entrance into Kindergarten, the chance of us "winning" again may have been slim. This was Kindergarten decision Part I. The next challenge we confronted was that while we "won" a spot at this coveted school, we had only won ONE spot for the twins. Challenge/ Decision Part II will be posted next!