Tuesday, February 21, 2012

school for olive (augustine)

somehow the time to choose a kindergarten for olive is upon us. i thought i had until the summer but apparently if we are choosing to lottery her into any school besides where our district assigns her our forms have to be in by next week. the choice is really only between two schools: clinton and indianola.

Clinton
pros: top rated elementary school in the city (highly ranked in the whole state!), augustine already goes there so i'm already familiar with the teachers and classmates.

cons: the school is only k-5 which means we'd either have to lottery her (them) for middle school or be content with their district assigned middle school which is kind of meh. the school is about a 1 1/2 miles away.


Indianola
pros: the school is right down the street, it's k-8, it's a good school, it's an "informal teaching style".

cons: moving augustine schools, getting acclimated to a new school/teachers, it's not as good as clinton.


first world problems here folks! both schools are great. we don't have anything bad to say about clinton, far from it! but the middle school issue is a big one. i don't know a ton about our middle school but what i do know is that it's pretty typical public city school. the quality of education would be consistent throughout at indianola. so big picture "good" school vs. incredible elementary and "par" middle school is the conundrum basically.

advice would be fantastico.

4 comments:

Ariel said...

You may want to talk to Chelsea and JoBeth--they both pulled their kids from Indianola. Not sure what's going on there but I know a lot of Christian parents who have pulled their kids from Indianola recently

maureen said...

One thing I would consider is that policy and schools can change between now and the time your peeps are ready for MS. Sibling preference could change, stable schools could become less so and same with unstable schools becoming stable.

Also... I'm assuming you've talked to the former indianolia families about their experiences. I will pray you feel really good about whatever decision you make!

Maureen

meridith said...

i don't feel qualified to offer any advice (since i haven't crossed the road yet or researched these schools) but here is my first thoughts on reading this.

clinton elementary sounds awesome and you know it is through experience so if it were me i think i'd stick with it. the way life goes by the time there are ready for middle school circumstances could change in some way (moving, changes at the middle school, any number of things). i guess i am thinking cross the middle school path when you get there.

Olive said...

@ariel at least in the case of chelsea i believe it was born out of a desire to homeschool not some problem with the school but i will be rooming with her at the women's retreat this weekend so i will pick her brain.

@maureen wonderful point! i LOVE clinton. i mean they are highly ranked for a reason and i feel like we see evidence of that. i did enter them into the lottery however we have many months before we have to commit one way or another.

@meridith you and marueen both made the same, excellent point about schools changing. i am just one of those planners when it comes to this area of my children's lives. which is funny because i'm pretty lax about most other areas. well not LAX but more of the vein of "things will work out naturally".