Kindergarten

Nick is starting Kindergarten next year.

New Hampshire has required that all towns have public Kindergarten for the 09-10 school year. I am fairly certain that our town did not want a public Kindergarten, and would have been perfectly happy to put it off indefinitely. But they have to do it, and so they will. Five days a week, for 2 hours and 30 minutes, no recess, in mobile classrooms on rented land.

This means we have to make a choice. Because the school we send the boys to now HAS a Kindergarten, and they need to figure out if they will keep having one. For a few hundred dollars a month Nick could go to school from 9 to 3pm in a setting he knows with teachers he is familiar with, in a program that has had 20 years to establish itself.

Personally, I don't think Nick's school is going to have a problem keeping its program. But Nick will be going to the public school.

This is a complicated choice for me. It's not just money, although it's always there as a concern. but there's much more to it that that. If I were to be honest, I would admit that there's an element of stubbornness to my decision. I think the school board left it to the last minute and is putting together a minimal program to actually discourage parents from sending their children, simply to justify their own belief that a Kindergarten is unnecessary. But even though it seems thrown together on the outside, I'm not convinced that the actual teaching and learning will be that much different. Being part of the public Kindergarten should ease his transition to First Grade. And yes, the timing and the schedule will be different, but having him at home a few more hours each day won't hurt, either. It will leave time to do other things.

I get so torn up over choices when it comes to the boys and school. I absolutely hated school, the dread starting to build up as early as Sunday morning. I know that this isn't true of all kids, and that many children actually enjoy school, at least while they are young. I want so badly for this to be true of my boys. I want them to like learning, and not to feel overwhelmed. And each decision I make I wonder if it's the right one, or if I'm setting my kid up to be miserable.