We love our neighborhood, but we've always known that our zoned school, AC Moore, is not great. We chose our current preschool, in part, because they bus kids from two other much better elementary schools to the church for after school care, creating a legitimate reason to request a transfer through the district registrar. The catch that has loomed over our heads all this time, though, is that this is only an option IF (BIG IF) there's room for a particular school year. Last year, for example, neither of those schools (Brennen or Rosewood), had any room for such transfer requests. And IF there is ever room, spots are extremely limited, so it's a big gamble either way.
I grew up in a small town where the schools were great no matter where you lived, so the struggle to find good schools within a city has been eye-opening for me, to say the least.
Knowing it would be a shot in the dark to transfer, we took a tour of AC Moore just to see for ourselves. It didn't take us long after that tour to decide that it was not an option for us. We couldn't picture Jake thriving there and knew we'd never be comfortable with it. It has a 4 out of 10 rating, the demographics are alarming (this is a private blog, so I'm not afraid to say that), and it just wasn't going to happen.
So, we also toured a local private school, Timmerman, as another option in case we didn't get a transfer approval for Rosewood (our top choice). We liked it a lot and pretty much decided that we'd somehow make it work financially if we didn't get a spot at Rosewood.
I also took a tour of Rosewood and fell in love. It is rated 9 out of 10 and has a great reputation. It is also very close by, which is great. It has about 420 students in attendance (K-5), so it's small and all 3 of the kindergarten teachers, as well as the principal, are so great. It is just a sweet neighborhood school and I left feeling really great about it and even more desperate to get Jake in.
We wouldn't find out until 2/17/16 whether or not there was even room for transfer requests. We did find out then that there would be room at Rosewood for the '16/'17 school year, but very limited, and that teachers' kids transfer requests and sibling requests take priority. BUT after that, it was first come first served. HOT dog! There was a chance! A small one, but a chance is a chance. 3/1 was the big day to submit our request.
So, I went to work getting all the necessary paperwork together, signed, etc...I would be embarrassed to say how many times I checked an rechecked this paperwork, which included, among many other things, the key document of the signed and notarized child care affidavit from Incarnation. I took the packet of documents up to the registrar's office a week prior to turn in day for them to look over to eliminate the chance that our packet would be disregarded as incomplete when the time came. There was no stone left unturned.
2/29 rolled around and John and Chris Wood (our friends, the Woods, went through this experience right along with us for their son, Caleb) geared up to head to the registrar's office to spend the night in the parking lot so that they would be first in line the morning of 3/1. John went to pick Chris up at 2am and on they drove, straight into the GHETTO (seriously the project right next to the registrar's office was featured on a recent episode of Gangland on the History channel), to fight for a spot at Rosewood for Jake and Caleb. They were the second and third ones to sign the sign in sheet the next morning, but were first and second for the kindergarten spots at Rosewood (yay!). Even still, we wouldn't know for weeks whether or not we got in because there was no way to know how many teacher and sibling requests were being considered for the same spots. We finally got our letter 3/25 letting us know that our request to transfer to Rosewood Elementary was GRANTED through fifth grade! (we also know that Hamp will 99% be in, too, based on sibling transfer). So I told John he can now say he risked his life to get his son into a good kindergarten! ha!
And I think the registrar's office knows my voice and name by now, as I called so many times throughout this process to check on a status. Oh well!
Y'all just don't know what a weight this is off of our shoulders. We have prayed about it and talked it to death and now it is finally settled.
Now that this is done, it's sinking in that my baby is going to be a big-school boy. Such is life.
But I know he will thrive and will love it!!!!!
**ratings from greatschools.org. You can look up any public school in the United States on this site and find information on test scores, enrollment numbers, gender and race statistics, personal reviews, and other useful information.
**we are zoned for a great middle and high school (AC Moore and Rosewood feed into them) so we're good to go there.
We went to the Rosewood playground yesterday to play so that Jake could see where he's going. (He has no idea that it was a tough/lengthy process to get him in there. When he asked where he was going before we were sure, we just told him we were looking around to try to find the one that was best for him.)
He is very excited and doubly so that he and his best buddy "Cawup" (Caleb) will be going to Rosewood together!
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