Thursday, May 29, 2014

School’s Out for Summer



Well, almost.

We are all groaning our ways through the last days of school. I have two children, and they are at the same school, so my end-of-year should be pretty standard. You’d think. You know, the usual end-of-year parties and “what to get the teacher” dilemma, combined with “what are we going to do with the kids all summer, OMG why is everything so expensive” (sob sob, rend clothing, shake fist at sky).

Oh, but no.

My fifth grader is graduating from elementary school. So there are extras, like a yearbook, and graduation picture, and Class of 2014 T-shirt, and end-of-year field trip day to some seventh circle of hell where they pour skittles into the kids’ mouths and give them IV’s full of cotton candy and let them drive go-karts, play mini golf and dominate on arcade games, following which they release them staggering into the daylight laden down with tiny plastic trinkets and huge twisty drink cups with the straws attached and a mountain of other plastic crap which they do not need but insist they do because they won it playing games, don’t you see, it’s not fair. Also, my kindergartener is sort of-kind-of culminating. It’s not a graduation, per se, but they’re also having a party. On a different day than fifth grade graduation.

Also: my kids seem suddenly to be performing arts gurus, because they have both been asked to perform this week – one, dancing at a Motown revue event last night, and the other, playing drums in her rock band this afternoon in front of the whole school.

Added to that, my children are changing school districts next year, a delicate procedure during which you must keep your shit together all whilst feeling the top of your head might pop off at any second. There are sooooo many forms. And soooo many documents you must collect from hither and yon – birth certificates, utility bills, report cards, copies of standardized tests, immunization records, etc. There’s the ridiculous health card you must fill out with the child’s medical history asking you, among other things, at what age your child first sat up? First crawled? First walked? Are they for real with this? I barely remember what I did last weekend.

And enrolling the kids is a multi-part process. Ceeya must visit the new school next month for an official literacy assessment, and in California they are doing this graduated shifting of the eligibility date for kindergarten which apparently also extends to first grade, which I don’t understand. Ceeya was three weeks too young for kindergarten this past year, but they accepted her provisionally and now she has blown all the assessments in her current school out of the water. (Seriously, the “good” proficiency score in phonics was 28, and she scored 112. She may have broken their test.) Now I have to go through the same thing with the new school so she doesn’t have to repeat kinder because she won’t be six years old by Sept. 1st.

It is like having another job. I am exhausted. No Pinterest-worthy teacher crafts over here, man. I am out.


1 comment:

Bridget said...

I think you should let Ceeya fill out the forms! *laughs*

Seriously, that is all so ridiculous, Lisa. I hope you were able to wade through the process already and that you are concentrating on summery things now.