A journey through the system

The school year is really winding down.  It always does right after Spring Break, which comes really quickly after Winter Break.  Then the summer goes fast and it is the school year again and before I know it Christmas and Winter Break all over.  I don't remember it happening that fast when I was a child.  School always dragged on and on and breaks were over in a blink of an eye.  Just when you got a good game going and the teams just so it was time to pack it all in and get to bed early because school was starting tomorrow.  But now?  Now the years just roll faster and faster, and the child that I worried about where she would go to kindergarten

is now graduating from 8th grade and heading to high school.

There is much to be done before school ends, of course.  We have graduation to plan, an eighth grade dance to plan, an international trip to travel, finals to prepare for, field trips to attend, papers to write, and sign ups for high school to be completed by the end of the month.

Thanks to the generosity of my mother my children have been in the private school sector since the age of three.  Next year Madison will enter the world of public education.  To her and her parents it is the unknown.  Just as the years have changed from old lady driver speed to hurricane speed so have the ways of schooling.  High schoolers are expected to pick a major before enrolling for their freshman year.  At 14 years of age they should know what career path they want to walk down.  Who are these people at the helm kidding?  At 14 I wanted to be 21, skinny, and a famous writer for General Hospital.  Either that or a skinny actress on General Hospital.  A week later I thought I might be a private investigator instead.  Thank goodness no one really expected me to have it narrowed down when I entered the high school building my first day.

Here where we live in Florida I had to pick a high school for my daughter to attend if she wanted to get into one of the three "magnet" programs, which is really code for "smart kids that don't want to be thrown in with the riff-raff that don't care about school" programs.  Kids who enroll in "magnet" schools, of course, have chosen their careers and can choose to attend a school that specializes in their field.  On the list of "magnet" programs we could chose a career in medicine, culinary arts, engineering, teaching, forensic science, environmental technology and marine science, architectural design, computer technology, business, and graphic arts.  Or we could opt for one of the higher educated programs such as the International Baccalaureate Program or the Cambridge Program which have strict enrollment policies.  All of these schools are located throughout the county, and if your child chooses one that is 45 minutes away, parents are responsible for getting them to and from school.  Busing is available at a few "magnet" schools, but that would mean a child would be picked up before 6 AM and ride an hour to school.  Good-bye friends that you made in middle school.  We'll keep in touch via Facebook.

I attended a school that went from kindergarten to the 8th grade.  That school fed into one high school which meant that I attended school with most of the same people for 13 years.  All the kids in the neighborhood went to the same school if they enrolled in the public system.  Any sort of "magnet" programs educating the intellectual students happened right there in the same high school before, during, and after school.  There was no break down into categories.  If you were interested in the fields of forensic, marine, or environment, you enrolled in several Science classes.  If journalism, screenwriting, or poetry was your cup of tea, you took extra English classes.  And if you were interested in both?  You took both.  You weren't handicapped into picking one theme nor were you expected to stick with that for the next four years.  We also had two classes in electives from a wide pool of choices.  Now?  My daughter can chose one elective from a pool that includes human geography. 

Once Tom and I my daughter decided which school to attend we had to sign her up online, choosing three schools in order of importance, submit her credentials, and wait for several weeks to see if she had been accepted.  When she got  into her first two choices we she had to accept only one online.  Yesterday we got a letter from the school telling us we would now have to sign her up for classes, but because we are in the private sector we will have to make an appointment to fill out her school schedule.  In the next line it said she would be expected to take the following 6 classes and then 1 chosen elective from a list of 6 choices.  This will need to be done during school hours.  So we need to take Madison out of school so that we can make meet with someone to sign her up for that one class.  No online sign-ups allowed.

I'm exhausted navigating my way through the website and the system, but I each time I see the end it is really only the beginning.  And this is just high school.  In three years it will all have to be done again as we go through the college process.  Which will be here in a snap of my fingers and a blink of my eye...