Icing and Cherries

Oy gevalt, I am so confused. Just returned from our fifth and final kindergarten tour--our neighborhood school, Foster Elementary.

And it was awesome. I mean, really. I can't find any fault with it. The 90-minute tour was led by Principal Downey, who is just a big mensch of a man. (You can tell I'm overwhelmed from my use of Yiddish.) He was so warm and personable and all the kids kept calling out to him with genuine affection "Hi, Mr. Downey!" We met a bunch of teachers from all grades, and every last one seemed great--engaged and caring. We watched the students in their rooms--some chaotic, some orderly, but all seeming like an enjoyable and stimulating educational experience.

I had a lot of questions this time, and some of the answers were pleasing and surprising. For instance, 85-90 percent of the students live in the neighborhood--good for Jarrah and making friends. The other 10 percent are kids of people who work at the hospital down the street, giving the school a truly international diversity. Technology is rolling out at the same rate as the other district schools--two of the teachers showed us how they do math with a combination of Netbooks and Smartboards. But the kindergarten rooms were wondrously low-tech, with drawings and books and toys everywhere. I liked the messiness of it--the rooms seemed well-loved.

But that was another surprise. I thought the school would seem run-down, having been built in 1955, but it was actually quite cheery and orderly. Kids were practicing for their variety show next week, and we saw other kids running laps for prizes on their recess. The school is currently being recognized by the state for the work they've done with students in the past couple of years. It was clear that the principal takes great pride in the school and its students.

I liked the quiet privacy of the kindergarten quad, which has its own playground, and how all the rooms had windows. Oh, and the library! It's pretty new, very cheery, and filled with light. Probably the nicest one we've seen.

Of course, they have problems, like any other CA school right now. They lost seven teachers last year, and their kindergarten ratio has gone from 16-to-1 to 24-to-one in one year. They have too many students for the three kindergartens, so there's one K-1 combo. The principal told us that parents opt to take background checks so they can drive students on field trips, since they can no longer afford buses for those trips.

And then there's that one nagging detail, which actually means nothing to me except that it's a mathematical statistic, right there in black and white: The other schools we've seen all have an API score of 10. Foster's is 6. It's actually down a point from last year. What does this mean? Why don't their students test as well? Who knows?

But at the end of the day, it's a relief to know that--if we can't have our top choice or even our second choice in the lottery--Jarrah could do a lot worse than her neighborhood school. In fact, it no longer seems like a last resort at all. But what should our FIRST choice be? That I still don't know, and it's only a matter of days before we have to decide.