It's been a crazy fast ride these past few days. The journey that lead up to the last few days started in August when we made the decision that Emma should be in seminary this year even though she wasn't in the 9th grade yet. We made the decision based on the fact that she meets the age requirement, but not the year of school requirement. I won't go into detail here to keep a long story short, but after some persistence and council our initial no became a yes. Our goal was to have Emma graduate high school 1 year early because she wants to make up the year she lost from us starting her late. In order to attend the college she wants to go to a certificate of graduation from 4 years of seminary is required and she would only get 3 if she waited. This year would need to be made up through some home study and with trying to pull off a year early graduation, it wouldn't be doable.
Ok, now fast forward to last week. It was Mon when I finally got a return call from counselor at the middle school to see what our options were if we were going to succeed at our goal. Our only option. Test out of the 8th grade immediately. She would have to move quickly because we were already several weeks into the school year and in order for the credits to count you have to be in attendance so many days of that semester. That was an absolute no go as far as Emma was concerned. It is hard enough to start the 9th grade with your peers let alone start 6 weeks into the year after skipping a grade and survive.
My next stop was to leave a message for the 9th grade counselor at the high school to see what our options were if we waited until she started the 9th grade. We had a lovely conversation on the "joys" of the government in our state. Like most states we have a program with the community college that you can graduate high school with an associate degree. What makes our state particularly "lovely" is that you are not allowed to take any of your core classes at the college, only electives. Why? The unofficial, completely off the record guess by the counselor.... The funding that the school gets per student is based on how many students attend the core classes, so if you take your core classes at the college, no $$$ for the school for that student. The BS becomes nearly unachievable and a waste because you have to double up on classes let alone the worry of transfer credits. Because of our states rule that also means that each student may only take the core classes for the current year they are enrolled in. So she couldn't be a freshman and take a sophomore core class etc... So my statement/ question to that was: "so what you are saying is that the state doesn't really care about my child and her education, they only care about the money they get for her?" The counselor laughed and said something about how lovely and "special" our state was. Armed with that information, our only option was for Emma to be in an online school or home schooled where she could move through the courses as fast as she wanted to make up a year.
My next call was to the online school, which is surprisingly part of our school district, no surprise that the other schools in the district like to bad mouth. As with all calls to administration to any school we have been with, my questions were not met with pleasantries but rather rudeness. I pressed on though. I got the usual, "well there is an acceptance process, our 8th grade class is already full, why do you want to come here....." I was told I could fill out a pre-enrollement form and basically cross my fingers. Emma had been home sick for 2 days and so I had plenty of time to discuss her options and what she wanted to do. Before I left to pick up the forms she told me that she wanted to just wait until 9th grade to change to this other school because she still wanted to be in choir and do track with her friends this year. I wasn't sure if the school was expecting me to come in or not and I wasn't sure I should even go in because of what Emma just told me. I had to run another errand and had to drive past this school and I had a fight with myself on wether or not I should pull in. My car pretty much drove itself in there and I took a deep breath, went in and thought that I would just see where going in led me.
I was a bit taken aback when I entered the building to this one room school house. Three days a week the student does work from home, but two days a week they come in and receive instruction from teachers and receive any help they need with their assignments. I really started questioning why I was there. I was again met with an unfriendly receptionist, which I am convinced is a requirement to work in a school, and got my forms. When I handed them back I was asked to meet with admissions. Turns out she had pulled Emma's transcripts and suddenly I was an awesome person that they wanted to talk to. I kissed up as best I could and spoke unfavorably about the system we were coming from. I also explained our goals and what we were hoping to accomplish and asked if she could help us accomplish them. She said she would call me the next day with what I thought would be a, yes this is doable or no it's not, try homeschool.
The next day I got the call saying that Emma had been accepted and that I needed to go to the middle school and withdrawal her. Say huh??? Wait, where are the breaks on this train? I about threw up thinking of telling Emma that I know she told me she didn't want to start until next year, but too bad. I did have a peace offering to hopefully sweeten the deal though. I was able to work out her being able to still attend her middle school for choir which is right before lunch and she can still participate in their sports program because they are part of the same school district and they allow for 1 elective. When I told her she said "ok, awesome, when do I start?" "Ummmmm, how do I say this, tomorrow!" A funny thing that happened while withdrawing her was that when she went around to all of her teachers to sign out they were all really sad and stunned, but one of the teachers was so stunned she asked "what happened? Is everything ok? I know the high school has problems, but we've got a good team here." At least there was no denial about the system she was heading for next year if she stayed. :0) BTW, Emma is loving her new school and she still gets to see her friends 3 times a week. Her big epiphany that this was the route she wanted to take was after she had been sick for 2 days it only took her 1 hour to do all her make-up work. She realized that there was a lot of wasted hours in the day in traditional school and graduating a year early was a completely achievable goal. Now if I only she could drive because my life is now dedicated to running her all over the place during the day. A day that starts at 5 AM. :0)
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