LilKat1 is going to be starting Kindergarten this September. The school that he is currently enrolled in has just switched from half-day kindergarten to full-day. When I went to the Kindergarten registration day, there was a form that you could fill out if you wanted full-day kindergarten. The cost for full-day was extra, something like $3000 for the year. There were 46 signatures on the form and only 20-something spots. I think I may have been the only one there who did not want the full-day class. Well, I guess the response was so big that they decided to change all of the classes to full-day. Many parents were happy about this because a) their kid would get into a full-day class and b) they wouldn't have to pay extra for it.
Well, this means that LilKat1 will be in school from 8:30-2:50. That's over 6 hours! Doesn't that seem like a lot? We think so. So we're trying to figure out our options.
Option 1 is to have him go to the same private school that he went to preschool at. The cost for this would be something like $2600 for the year. He loves his school, so we know he'd have a great time there. Plus, he'd get an extra year of Christian education. But we wouldn't be able to afford to keep him there, so he'd have to transfer for 1st grade.
Option 2 is to try to get him into a charter school. There's one near by that has half-day kindergarten. They actually look like a fantastic school. But you have to do a lottery process to get in, so there's no guarantee that he would get in.
Option 3 is to try and do an in-district transfer to another public school that offers half day kindergarten. So far, this is the most appealing. We'd have the option of letting him stay at his new school up through 5th grade. We'd also have the option of sending LilKat2 and PrincessKat there as well. However, if we did that, our kids would be going to a different school than all of the other neighborhood kids. I don't know if this is a big deal, but it's something to think about. Furthermore, registration is happening right now, and it sounds like we'd need to get that process done really quickly before the classes got filled up.
Option 4 is to have him stay at his current school, but pick him up from class half-way through. I talked with the district supervisor about this and she said it was an option. I still need to talk with the principal about it. The benefit would be that if LilKat1 decided that he really liked school and wanted to stay the whole time, then he'd be able to. The downside would be that he would miss out on all of the afternoon activities and could possibly end up behind a bit.
Option 5 is to just have him stay at school and go full time.
Right now, I think option 3 is the most attractive. I have a call in right now for the in-district transfer stuff. I just hope it gets done quickly. There's another public school very close by that he could go to. Some of the kids that go there would actually live closer to us than some of the kids at his current school. On his soccer team, 2 of the other boys are already enrolled at the other school (I think). The half-day kindergarten goes from 8:20-10:40. Much more reasonable I think. You know, the more I think about it, the more I'm rooting for option 3 to work out.
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