Scary Stuff

Our oldest daughter is heading off to high school next week. *Big sigh* Freshman orientation was tonight *Bigger sigh* There are over 350 students starting 9th grade (as opposed to 25 in her class last year). That means that there are at least 1400 students who attend the same school. I'm trying hard not to freak out about the numbers. My graduating class was 132. That was and is still the largest class that has ever graduated from my school and we all attended school with each other from kindergarten on. These kids in my daughter's class have been assembled from 35 elementary schools into 6 middle schools.

I grew up in a cookie cutter society. Even though we were only 16 miles from the capital city, there was no diversity. My classmates had mostly blond hair and blue eyes. We were all middle class and lived in similar homes. I don't ever remember comparing what I had to someone else, even through high school.

Mr. Sign and I decided long ago that the diversity of the school district that we live in was something we wanted our children to experience. I didn't want them to have to learn to deal with people's differences in college or in the work place.

Another reason we keep our children in the public school district is that because it's so large, the curriculums offered blow the others out of the water. Our city is surrounded with school districts that are 3 miles or less away but worlds away when it comes to offerings. Unfortunately, the media likes to bash our school district as enrollment dwindles.

We got to meet #1's core class teachers and I really liked 2 of them. The school is trying something new this year. They have split the freshman into 5 teams. Each team of teachers is located in the same vicinity so the kids will not have to go far to get to their classes (the school is spread out over 4 acres and has 4 floors). The idea behind the teams is that the teachers will be able to identify problems with students because the teachers will conference with each other about performance.

There is an issue of #1's placement though. #1 seems to think that most of kids on her team are some of the same kids who held her class back a couple of years ago. My concern is that if she is wasting time in a class that is moving too slow, she will be penalized for the rest of her life. I told her that we need to wait and see and hopefully the teachers will see that she is an above average student.

The school states that there will be no schedule changes but I know that they have really screwed up some kid's schedules. One of #1's friends is physically disabled and they have that poor girls classes on 4 different floors. There is no way she could make it to all of them in the time alloted.

I realize that there will always be students who make poor choices wherever you go. It won't make any difference how much money their parents make. It's all in statistics. The more students there are, the more problem students there will be. The same goes for gifted students. The percentages of good versus bad, remain the same. I only hope that I have raised my daughter to make the right choices.