Today our school system’s high school lottery application is
due. After spending hours attending open
houses for all the high schools in the pool, discussing with your child about
which school is better (in whatever terms you determine), what programs they
are interested in, what excited them about which school, they turn in their
form to be thrown into a large fishbowl. They are then assigned with some
consideration for their preference, then gender, socioeconomic status…. But
wait.
Why did we miss watching The Voice and eating dinner at the table to listen
to all those teachers and students tell us about the wonders of their school
when none of that necessarily comes into play in the assignment of the
school? And wait. Why is this process only for select schools
in particular neighborhoods, which happen to have a browner and less affluent
population than other sections of the county? Why don’t all families have the
wonderful opportunity to have no stable plan for where their children will go
to high school? Our family, due to the luck
of perfectly spaced out stair-step ages of our children, at least have the
option of sending a child to the same as their older sibling, so we could,
theoretically, send all of our children to the same high school. But now our child number two is questioning
whether it’s fair for our oldest to have had the choice of all schools (but not
really) and she only gets the choice of one.
Come on – doesn’t everyone want to enjoy this fun dinner conversation
for three months every other fall?
I recognize that there are many things at play here. The school system and our family dynamics.
The school system. Can’t really speak for it. I have my own
ideas of how and why this lottery device is only used in the schools with the
higher minority populations in the county.
I question why gender and socioeconomic status is even in the considerations. So if, by the time my kid’s name gets pulled,
there are enough African-American girls whose family is in the same income
bracket as our family in a particular school, she has to go somewhere
else? Doesn’t matter if that school
offers the program that she got all fired up about in one of those hours-long
open houses. I don’t clearly understand
why if student achievement is truly the goal here, why don’t we use some of
that money used to bus kids to all these different schools (note, a bus for
each high school has to hit every neighborhood – there are at least 4 buses
that roll through my neighborhood every morning) to hire more or better
qualified teachers, whether quantity or quality is the issue? Why don’t we use some of the money required
to print all these application forms and the pages and pages of instructions to
purchase additional instructional materials to support student learning? I
mean, if it is about student achievement.
But let me not speak for the school system.
Let me get to family dynamics. There’s a few things that literally make me
laugh about this process. One that it is supposedly to give kids a choice. This concept however, is not in our schools
alone. How many parenting articles are
there about how to get a picky eater to eat – offer them multiple options of
veggies? Ha! When I grew up, my mom made
dinner and we had two options – eat or not eat.
And if we chose to not eat, that came with the added feature of go to bed. It’s a sign of our times though, isn’t it.
Somewhere over the last generation, we decided that children should have more
options because surely, their parents don’t know what’s best for them or, are
not busy enough without the added activity of coming up with something to put
behind Door #2 and #3.
Here’s another laughing matter about this school thing. The child actually has to sign the paper
that’s submitted for the lottery. What? My middle schooler has to sign a
document to say what – that they approve of what I wrote on the paper? That they have knowledge of what I wrote on
the paper? That they are literate and
should even be kept in school? (And,
note, I’m skipping the whole conversation that they don’t even learn cursive in
school so I’m not sure how they’re supposed to sign, anyway.) Don’t tell the schools, but I write my kids’
names on stuff all the time; partly because they are usually in bed by the time
I get to go through all their paperwork, but partly because I don’t really
think I need my kid’s permission to make school decisions.
But this signing things go along with the first point about
kids thinking they have options. My
daughter actually was confounded that she didn’t get to select her own
preferences because the School told her she could choose. But her Mother told
her that she had made the choice for her.
But the School…. yeah, but the parents are the ones who make the rules
around here.
Now, before my kid gets put in our last choice school
because no other Black girl picked it, let me rush off to the post office and
get this paper in on time.
