School Daze

What is more difficult than fighting one's way through the public school lottery system in San Francisco? "Nothing," I would've said a few months ago. But, oh-ho, was I wrong.

Fighting one's way through the difficult-to-navigate online directory of 490 public schools in the city of Chicago from thousands of miles away is worse. Particularly when a) you know you've missed the application deadlines already; b) your son would technically be placed in kindergarten next year, rather than 1st grade, if we had been there all along; and c) your neighborhood hunt is strongly dependent on which school you want. To make matters worse, the online directory attempts to be helpful by showing us the "attendance zone" for each neighborhood school. However, they are all very oddly-shaped and don't show all of the street boundaries, making them very difficult to compare to, say, an apartment listing one might see on craigslist. Sigh.

By the way, one should not underestimate the wonder of California's class size reduction law. I know it threw things into quite a turmoil, but you appreciate it when you see schools with 30 kids in K-2 classrooms. Baxter's class of 17 already seems large.

For the first time, I have felt compelled to contact a few private schools. This is mainly because I am losing faith that we will find a decent school in a neighborhood that we like (read: that's not overly chi-chi) AND find a good enough apartment in that good enough school's exact zone. Sure, there are some fabulous public schools. However, at the moment they appear to be in Chicago's equivalent of Marin - we already escaped that once!

But I am hammering away at this, determined to find good schools in nice neighborhoods that we would be happy in. If my determination and bleary internet-gazing eyes are indicators of success, I'll find them.