Moving Schools

I have lamented in the past about how we have a love/hate relationship with Declan’s current school. The kids are special needs mixed with non-special needs kids and it causes an atmosphere of caring and thoughtfulness – and also sometimes an atmosphere of utter chaos. We have communication issues with the teachers, ones that we have repeatedly addressed and we been repeatedly frustrated over.

In our recent parent/teacher conference we re-addressed all our converns and had a nice heart-to-heart with Declan’s teachers. In addition to talking about our communication problems, we obviously talked about Declan. In his little “report card,” he was basically off their charts for everything with the exception of social interactions. He is still freezing up and not voicing his concerns when he gets upset about something. They said he has definitely improved over the past 6 months, but if there was anything for him to work on – that would be it.

We told them about how we had been considering moving him to the Early Childhood Education (ECE) program at the local elementary school in the Fall. They jumped on that. They felt that it would be a very good thing for Declan to make the move and get adjusted to a new school prior to Kindergarten. (P.S. I’m hoping that it wasn’t that they were just trying to get rid of us!)

So Bryan has been investigating the ECE program and with the exeption of him asking about how often they watch videos in class and the principal saying pretty much never and then them walking on the the ECE class watching… The Lion King… (Eeks! Talk about embarassing! but apparently, they were watching it because the school met their reading goal and almost everyone was at a Rockies game and so the poor schlubs who couldn’t go to the game got to watch a movie).

SO. Long story short. Everything else checked out. He loved the program (especially the part where they personalize the lessons to each kid’s level), loved the principal and teachers, they have afterschool care till 6pm, it’s pretty much the same cost we are paying now… So we are making the switch come September! Bryan dropped off all the paperwork this morning!

And here is the best part! Although they do not live in our neighborhood, Lily’s parents were looking at the same school for pretty much the same reasons… and Jenny just called me and let me know that Lily got in! So, they will have each other to lean on come September too.

Now, who do I get to lean on? Cause I don’t deal with change very well… so all this is pretty overwhelming to me. Of course, Declan is all for it – so at least I have that in my favor.