Navigating Choice … I Thought I Had All The Answers
By Emory Edwards
This August, my oldest son will join thousands of kids across the country who are starting their journey into Kindergarten. While my wife and I are both excited and anxious about this milestone, we have to admit that we were totally not prepared for the process it took to find his school. As an employee of a national education organization who talks regularly with community leaders and parents about educational options and school choice, I thought this process would have been smooth sailing for us. Oh, was I ever so wrong.
STARTING THE PROCESS
Our journey started back in late April/May of 2018, when our son’s daycare center said that he was ready to move to their Pre-K class even though he hadn’t turned four yet. Our excitement quickly turned to anxiety as it hit us that he would be starting kindergarten in a little over a year. What school would we send him to? Do we try to get him in the magnet school near our house or look at one of the charter schools in the area? Or do we consider a private school — our church has a great Christian school, and he always enjoys attending their children’s’ church. We had a couple conversations about our initial thoughts and thought we had a plan to look into the magnet elementary school near our house — and that would essentially be our choice.
That was until the Indiana State Legislature dropped what felt like a bomb on us, changing state law to require students entering Kindergarten to be five on August 1. This was a drastic change from the previous guidance that required students to be five on or before the “count day.” Now, school districts would now not receive funding for students who were not five on August 1. Our son would turn five on August 11, six teaching days into the school year. This change completely ruined our well-thought-out plan and put us back in a “what do we do” mode.
After a couple weeks of anger and angst, and with a stronger resolve, we dove back into our school search. We knew how smart our son was, and we definitely did not want to keep him back a year, so we started looking at private schools to see what our options would look like. Our daycare center was planning a Kindergarten preview event that would have a few area private schools there, so we decided to attend. At the preview, we spoke to several private schools and even a few charter schools, but no school really impressed us. However, while we were there, something said to me to just ask one of the district systems that were represented there about any gifted or early access programs. Come to find out that Indianapolis Public Schools did have a process in which four-year-olds could start Kindergarten early by testing into their High Abilities program. This new information gave us more hope, and we started the process of contacting the program director and scheduling our son for his test. The days we waited for those results were extremely nerve-racking for us, as we knew those results would either open new opportunities for our son or truly limit the choices we would have for the first formal year of schooling for him. Luckily, he passed the test and would be able to apply to any traditional IPS School or an IPS Innovation Network Charter school.
NOW THINGS REALLY GOT FUN
Excited about the “choices” now available to us, we jumped right into the search process. I set up an account with Enroll Indy, the unified enrollment system, and started combing through the different offerings within IPS. I was surprised to see the number elementary options they had. From IB to Montessori to Place-Based Learning, there were more than 10 different program types to learn about and understand before we could narrow our list of schools. We ended up pulling Indiana Department of Education COMPASS reports for about 15 different schools before we narrowed down to our Top Six list. Now, because the uncertainty of whether he would be able to attend a state-funded school, we ended up reviewing these schools within a week of deadline of the first enrollment window. We were not able to visit any of the five schools we selected to apply for using Enroll Indy. We strictly had to go off COMPASS reports and what we’d heard from friends, co-workers, other community leaders in selecting those schools. Now we would wait for match results.
BACK AT SQUARE ONE
A few months went by, and the announcement came out that placements results would be emailed out within the week. We received our email and got the news that our son had not been matched to any of the schools we selected. The reason why? We lived out of district. In our conversations related to testing into the High Abilities program, we made sure to mention that we lived in a neighboring district. We hoped that having the distinction of passing the High Abilities test would have helped us get a match to one of the more premier “choice” schools. We quickly found out it didn’t — and that because we live out of district, we’re essentially in the last group of students to be matched to a school. We were back at square one again.
As we started the selection process again, my wife was at her wits’ end. She was totally over the process. She was almost 100 percent set on sending him to private school, no matter what. After much negotiation, I was able to convince her to give IPS another shot, knowing that we were coming down to the wire. So, we sat down again and took another look at our list of 10 schools. We decided to approach things differently this time. Instead of looking at which schools were the overall best, we looked at which program would be best for our son. Six of the schools we immediately decided to toss out. While they were great schools, they were all some of the most prized schools in the district so we knew it would be a slim chance we would get a seat at any of them. With the remaining four, we were able to drill down into the pedagogy. Our final decision came down to a Montessori school and a Place-Based Learning charter school. We again begin to drill our friends in the movement about their thoughts about the school leaders and were able to take a tour to the Montessori school. My wife also scheduled a tour with a private school she preferred just in case things didn’t work out in our favor. Again, we waited.
FINALLY MATCHED
After waiting a few weeks, we received our notice that he was matched with our top selection, the Place-Based learning charter school. We were both relieved that we were finally done with this journey and we could now start getting our son excited for his new school. We also reached out the school’s founder and principal to meet with them to learn more about the school and how we could help as parents. After spending a few hours with Mrs. Livingston and Principal Armstrong, we are confident that we made the right choice for our son’s education, and we’re proud to say that our son is an Urban Act Academy student.
MAKING OUR “CHOICE”
Having the opportunity or access to choose the school the best suited our son was very important to us. Every day in our careers, we work to give parents more opportunities and greater access to school choice programs. After now having gone through this process ourselves, we are more committed than ever to continue that work.
While it was stressful at times, our journey showed us how important it is for families to have more educational options. It also showed us that there is still a lot of work to be done to help streamline the process of navigating options for parents. We were pleased that we knew people within the system and what questions to ask. However, for those families who aren’t as connected as we were, navigating through all the different options available in Indianapolis can be a monumental process. It could even deter them from “exercising” their choice. To those families, we say: Don’t give up the fight! Stay committed and work through the process until you’ve found the right school for your child. To the leaders of the system, we must make navigating choice a less arduous experience. If our end goal is to truly educate your youth, then we must empower parents with the right access and tools to make the process of selecting the school that best suits their child more obtainable.
Emory serves as Outreach Director for EdChoice.
