Here in Oakland the school system is a blessing and curse. The Oakland Unified School District is not the brightest shining star in the state. But, because OUSD is so troubled there are a lot of efforts at creating creative schools. Small schools with unique focuses, charter schools, private schools--we have tons of options. If one had a firm belief in a specific educational strategy they would be in heaven here as you could most likely find it. But, for those of us not deadset on one approach we are left with a two-month long decision-making process that feels a bit overwhelming.
All students in OUSD have to submit their "options" paperwork to determine who goes to which school. In order to know which school you want to Opt Into we have to go to open houses, tours, meet with principals, etc. We have narrowed down our search based on a few criteria and are now hoping we have some sort of gut-level impression when we walk in the school. Our current options are:
- Spanish Dual Immersion. There are several dual immersion schools in Oakland in both Mandarin and Spanish. We are interested in the Spanish models--one in our neighborhood and another a few minutes away. They both have a 90/10 model. This means the kids would be taught in Spanish 90% of the time and English 10%. The benefits of becoming bilingual are amazing. But there is still part of us that wonders if this is the right fit.
- Traditional. There are a few tradition schools we are looking at but our neighborhood traditional school just closed so it means a bit longer commute. These feel more like schools we went to as kids which is comforting. The 3 we are looking at are amazingly diverse which is nice. In all three there is no majority ethnicity--it is pretty evenly divided between about 4 different ethnicities.
- Montessori. There is a new charter school opening that has some interesting concepts and approaches. It follows a montessori approach which includes significant multi-age learning. I am not 100% sold on Montessori and even less sold on a start-up school.
In many ways I wish we were just assigned a school. It seems easier and could actually help address some of the disparities that exist in schools within Oakland. Sadly, while we have tons of choice there are so many failing schools in our system. Parents without knowledge or opportunity to spend hours reviewing, visiting and selecting schools end up at their neighborhood school. This means that families with more access all end up at one school (the "good" schools) and families without means end up at a different school (the "program improvement") schools. If everyone in our neighborhood was required to send their child to the neighborhood school it would be an incredibly diverse--ethnically and socioeconomically--school. I would venture to say that having a school full of families invested in the neighborhood would switch it from a "program improvement" to a "good" school. But alas that seems like a huge tide to turn.
Here's to two months of decision-making....
