Jack and Friends on their new school tour

Today we took Jack on a tour of his new school, the one he will start next year for kindergarden.

At the tour we learned there are only 30 openings for kindergarden. Of those 30 slots, 16 were siblings. Siblings get priority under the current system. Fourteen slots were left. There were 1000 people applying for them (another 1000 applied for other grade levels). They call it a lottery system for a reason. Truly, we won the lottery. This school rates very high, with 93% of it’s students meeting and exceeding the state standards. The Great Schools website gives it a 9 out of 10 score, as did Education.com.

We were also very happy to hear that one of his classmates from his current school got in as well. At least he’ll know someone from his old class next year. I think it will make the transition easier.

The school has a fine arts focus. Art, drama, music will all be studied in detail. I wonder how my shy little Jack will fair in the drama department. Because of the focus, things like gym and a second language fall to the wayside. However, I don’t think I would take Jack to art classes after school, but I’ll be sure to sign him up for after school sports. So perhaps this sort of set up works well for our family.

At one point they had the drama students do a 10 minute piece on stage. They were doing Salman Rushdie’s short stories. They looked so big and self assured! I couldn’t fathom Jack going to this school until he looked as big as them.

It was all very exciting to see our future and the future of our other kids laid out in front of us like this.