Noelle's Life :: School Days (Part 2)

If you’re just tuning in, you’ll want to start here to read part one. Again, this a long one and I ramble a lot!

Obviously our next step was to figure out where Noelle would go to school. Ideally, we'd send her to the neighborhood public school and all would be hunky dory. Unfortunately, and I really don't want to get into the whole MPS debate, Milwaukee is not known for its great public school system. While I'm not completely against sending Noelle to a good public school, I'm just not completely on board either.

Even if I found a great school and was totally on board with MPS, it was out for a few reasons:

1. There are no Milwaukee Public Schools anywhere near my house. It’s actually kind of strange, but the closest public elementary school is about 5 miles from my house (not that far, I know) and it’s one of the better MPS schools so they have a crazy waiting list. After that, the closest one is…well, I can’t even think of the next closest school. Now, I’m sure this isn’t a big deal to some people, but I think it’s important to go to a school close to home if you can. I grew up two blocks from my high school, and my elementary school was across the street from the high school. I think it provides a good sense of community and I’d like that for my children as well.

2. My reasoning mentioned above. The majority of MPS schools are not great. And I know that if more than 2 people read my blog I would stand a good chance of getting blasted for my opinion. But my brother and sister went to a "good" MPS school for a portion of elementary school, and having been in both public and private environments, they will tell you that at the MPS school they learned 10% of what they learned at the private school.

3. Regardless of the above reasons, MPS schools do not start until 4K, which brings us back to our original problem of keeping Noelle out of school for too long.

I know that there are so many different factors to what makes a school good or bad, but for us there just isn't a public school near us that fits the bill of what we're looking for. I also know that not all MPS schools are "bad" and if we lived in a different area or city, we would definitely look at public schools.

If we ever moved outside of the city limits, we would go to Wauwatosa (and we do hope ti be able to do this in the next couple of years) It's still in the middle of the city and gives us everything we're looking for: proximity to the city, diverse neighborhoods, non-cookie cutter houses and actual neighborhoods, not subdivisions. Another appeal to Tosa is the school system. While it’s not perfect, the public school system in Tosa is one of the best in the metro area. Something to note is that all communities in the metro area have open enrollment during which students in neighboring cities can apply for eligibility to attend schools in those other communities. So why not go the open enrollment route in Tosa public schools and save ourselves some moolah? Due to the schools’ reputations and the number of school-aged children living in the district, open enrollment is pretty much a joke. Out of the hundreds (thousands?) of open enrollment application the district receives, only 7% of open enrollment students are admitted.

But again, even if we wanted to take our chances with open enrollment, we’d still have to wait for 4K enrollment. So we’re back to our original predicament – are ya sensing a theme here??

So! That was a whole lotta talk to let you know we’ve decided to go the private school route, for now. This was a pretty easy decision for me as I went to private Catholic schools for 4K through high school. I greatly appreciate the educational environment I was raised in and I can’t thank my parents enough for the sacrifices they made to make this a possibility. I hope I don't come across as a snob in this post, with the public vs. private thing. My family is as blue collar as they come and I grew up with not a lot of money. But as I said in part one, education was a priority for my parents and that has definitely become a priority of mine. Bryan took a little more convincing though. He grew up in a public school system, but one in a city that had decent schools. It took a while to convince him that it was a different ball game in this city, but in the end he realized MPS wasn't what he wanted for Noelle either.

Now, while we decided on a Catholic private school, we also looked heavily into Montessori schools. We did a lot of research and talked to a lot of Montessori teachers who were friends of friends. In the end though, we realized that style of teaching just isn’t for us. Not to mention the tuition for non-public Montessori schools is in.sane. The public Montessori schools are pretty far away from our house and have long waiting lists anyway.

We have a couple different options for schools in our area and based on recommendations from friends and other parents, we focused in on one school in the heart of “downtown” Wauwatosa.

Bryan and I took a tour a couple of weeks ago because we thought we’d be enrolling Noelle in the near future. We absolutely loved the staff and the school! It just felt like the right place for our family.

Truthfully, the 3K program is similar to what Noelle has at daycare now, but it just feels like more of a step up. They have set times for different subjects and they even go to other classrooms for Art, Phy Ed and Library.

We found out that birth date doesn't make a difference for "second semester" and we briefly thought about enrolling Noelle in the school right away to help save some money. Unfortunately it ended up not working out because they only had openings in the PM session, which just so happened to be Noelle's exact nap time. Noelle still takes and NEEDS a nap everyday and it wouldn't be fair to anyone involved to try to make her sit through school when she's used to sleeping. I know that she would probably get used to it, but we just weren't comfortable pushing something on her like that before she was ready.

Also, even though she could enroll in 3K now regardless of her birth date, she would still have to be 4 on or before September 1 to move on to 4K. Since she wouldn't be, she'd have to go through 3K again. This made these last few months of the school year seem kind of pointless to us.

She'll also have a friend in class with her (assuming they go to the same session). A friend of Bryan's from his MBA program sends her son to the school and her younger son will also start 3K in the fall. Hopefully we can set up some play dates so they can remember each other come fall!

So the end result is that she will start in the AM session of 3K this fall. We don't know if this will be her only elementary school - if we do move to Tosa we would more than likely enroll her in the public schools - but I think it's the perfect place for her right now. I'm very excited to watch her thrive in a new environment and as hard as it is to see your first born grow up so quickly, I know she's ready!

Whew! I congratulate you if you made it through that craziness! It's definitely been a process for us and I really hope going through it makes things easier for future situations. Obviously everyone's situation is unique and you have to make the right decision for your child and family, but if any of my random thoughts can help out another mom or dad, then I'm glad I put it out there.