Your friendly neighborhood school

[dorchadas]

Today was the parental information session for new families at Laila's new school, and while I couldn't go, I watched Laila while sashagee went. It ran over the hour they had set and sashagee didn't get to grab any coffee before she came home, but she took copious notes. Among those notes:

• It's an International Baccalaureate school, so it follows a standardized curriculum through all of its instruction (preschool through middle school).
• The school has a whole system of communications that goes through tiers, from emails and website announcements and fliers home and so on.
• There are a bunch of parent groups you can join, including some Facebook groups she said I should join.
• Breakfast and lunch are offered but optional, important because sashagee wants to make meals for Laila.
• There will be a "welcome back" day where we can take a tour of the school.

Something else that stuck out in her memory was overhearing a conversation about the condo to the south of us that was just on sale. A month or so ago, we were walking out on the sidewalk and I heard some people outside the condo showing say they already had twenty offers. Today, sashagee said she heard other people talking about wanting to move into the neighborhood to secure their kid a spot at the local school for kindergarten since if you're already in the school you don't have to change mid-year and it's possible that you'll get to stay in future years (depending on the school administration, how many students the school has, their admissions policies, the phases of the moon, and so on), and that the same condo had closed with over thirty offers and gone for 120K over asking price! Once again, me being very lucky has worked out in my favor--just a few blocks over and we'd be in another school district, none of which are as good as our local one.

Comments

[matsushima]

I work at an IB school. It's interesting that they describe it as "standardized" because it's actually very open-ended! All IB schools use the same vocabulary - e.g., PYP Units of Inquiry (How We Organize Ourselves, Where We Are in Place and Time, etc) - but each school builds up those units in ways that are relevant to the school context.

[dorchadas]

Admittedly I'm reporting it secondhand, but that was the impression I got from what sashagee told me (she was excited because her high school was also an IB school). That makes me curious how the local school implements it--I know they do a lot of culture/history lessons on other countries.