What I learned in getting ready for kindergarten:

Fight or Flight

For months now I - like hundreds of families in our city of Oakland - have been actively pursuing and searching out the options we might have for kindergarten. Along with these colleagues in this journey of school visits, web searches of databases, interviews of teachers, administrators, and friends our family received the news for next year this past week. Like many families we received none of the 6 options we had chosen as potential public schools for our 5 year old daughter. (An article in today's Oakland Tribune discusses how the School District Lottery Received Mixed Responses). Last Wednesday we discovered that despite my deepest fears and proactive visiting, networking, and research to find a good school, that my daughter had been sentenced to receive an education at our local neighborhood school (which we had purposely not chosen for it's 30% academic proficieny ceiling of acheivement).

In the midst of 24 hours my wife and I had to make a seemingly simple decision about kindgeraten that in a fubar-ed way has existential consequences for all of our life. Sending her to our local school was not an option. So do we send her to preschool again - a good place - but she's ready to move forward? Do we try to appeal, risking and betting everything on getting into a better school - the second time around? Should we even bother when we felt so screwed over the first time around - despite all the assurances of fairness and equity? Do we send her to a 20k/year private school - we applied to 2 as back-ups and sought financial aid - knowing that we can't afford it, yet choosing it as a short-term solution to our problem for next year? Do we move from Oakland because of the sad schools? Do we move back to Europe to give our kids a free (as it's normal there) bilingual education? Do I give up my job for one that pays better? Does this decision about kindergarten end up being an indirect form of family planning for us in terms of more children? Should we feel guitly or wrong about now supporting public schools with our family when we do so with our words, actions, and relationships?

I'm pondering over all of this as I sit on the front porch watching my daughter joyously riding her big wheel up and down the street, unaware - thankfully - of our decsion, the ramifications, and the ways in which it haunts and dominates my thoughts in my waking and sleeping. How in the world did kindergarten become such a key and foundational choice for the coming years in our life? And we have another daughter...who'll be at this point in 3 years. YIKES! Is this the cost of urban living? No wonder everyone flees to the suburbs and fly-over states when stuff gets difficult. In ancient times cro-magnum families had to choose between fight or flight in terms of being attacked by a sabor tooth tiger or the coming ice age....now with all of our 21st century sophistication, cultural imperialism, and technological prowress we're faced that same choice in terms of kindergarten.