I chose to start homeschooling when I was still living up in the Chicago area for several reasons. There were two elementary schools in our district and while we were a block closer to the one, my kids were suppose to attend the other one. Well, I found out that if I enrolled my kids late, the chances were high that I would get them in to the closer school (Havlicek), and that worked the first year I put Katie into school, and it worked again the next year when she was going into first grade and her sister was going in to kindergarten. But not the third year. My kids ended up at Prairie Oak which was six blocks in the other direction, and was by far the worse of the two schools. I had heard horror stories from other parents that had their kids in that school, and I dreaded sending my kids there. Well, the school turned out to be everything I feared. It had been completely knocked down and rebuilt about 10 years earlier, and while it looked new, it was a disaster inside. It was overcrowded to start with, and the lady at the front desk is just lucky that parents didn't jump the counter and slap her silly! I mean she was beyond rude to both the parents AND the children. She was downright mean at times. I hated any dealings I had to do with her. Then, in the classrooms, while Katie's second grade teacher was ok, she was limited in what she was allowed to do with the kids. Field trips? Not a single one. Recess? Forget it. The school was run like a prison. I had been a room mom for both my girls at Havlicek and I had helped to host the holiday parties, I went on field trips, I was an active part of my children's learning experience. The teachers knew me, they knew my children's particular needs, it was comforting. At Prairie Oak it was a completely different story. Parents were not allowed inside the classrooms and my younger daughter's teacher didn't throw holiday parties. The kids were lucky if they got a cupcake at Christmas and they had to sit in silence at their desks and eat it. When I sent cupcakes for Katie's birthday the mean lady at the desk wouldn't even allow me to help her up to the second floor with them. Instead she expected my 7 year old to haul some 40 cupcakes up to the second floor by herself with no help from anyone. My poor daughter had to make 2 trips and nearly dropped one box. I was angry. I think what clenched it for me was the fact that my younger daughter's teacher kept sending letters home telling me that she was acting up in class and disturbing the other students. I knew that wasn't like my daughter so I took her aside and I asked her what was going on. She said the teacher would give them a page of math to do, and my daughter happens to be above grade level in math, and she would whizz right through the page in less than 10 minutes and instead of the teacher giving her MORE work to keep her busy, she told my 7 year old to just sit there and be quiet. My daughter tried, but seeing her classmates struggling, some for up to an hour to do their math, she wanted to assist them and was getting in trouble for doing it. So, at conference I discussed this with the teacher, a woman who had been teaching for more than 20 years, and she looked dumbfounded when I told her she should give my daughter MORE work to do and not give her time to just sit there. Shortly thereafter my daughter began telling me that her teacher was giving her another paper when she finished her first one, or giving her a book to read. Problem solved, and I solved it instead of the teacher! I was frustrated because both my kids learn above grade level yet they were being forced to wait for their classmates to catch up, and while she's ahead in most everything, my older daughter has always struggled in math and I was afraid she would fall behind. I have a friend who's daughter attended Prairie Oak for the first 5 years of elementary, from Kindergarten to 4th, and she struggled in reading so badly, yet none of the teachers had the time to work with her one on one due to the overcrowding, and their solution was to stick her in summerschool, EVERY YEAR. She struggled in summer school and barely passed each year. And I mean she BARELY passed. Then her mother moved to a new school district and she switched schools. The new school she is in was what she needed. She is thriving there and her grades went up and everything. But I saw the potential for disaster with my own girls, so I made the decision to pull them out and homeschool. My girls did so much better with homeschooling than in public school. We moved here and now they take advantage of me. They seem to think that because I am mom, school isn't to be taken seriously and they don't want to listen. So I told them it's back to public school for them next year. So far I don't think they are taking me seriously, but I am dead serious. I'm going to look into the school systems here and see how good/bad they are, and if I am satisfied I will give them a chance. There isn't as much of an ovecrowding problem because we're in the country, but funding is an issue, so I'll have to see. I can't afford the fancy homeschooling programs and I haven't found good supplies that I can afford online, so I've been using my own methods, and while they are working, I could be doing better. I'd like to keep homeschooling my kids cause I think they are better off, but I need a more structured program for them. But I'm still glad I got them out of that school system. It was horrid. I wish public schooling was better and that the poor teachers aren't being stretched so thin. I don't know if there is hope for it or not. I have a friend who is a 3rd grade teacher in the Chicago Public School System and works in a very poor, and very bad, neighborhood, and she said the most frustrating thing is that the classes are so overcrowded and so many of her students come to her either not able to read at all, or barely able to read, and she doesn't have the resources or time to work with them all one on one. Top that with the fact that they are closing the school this year so as of next school year, she is out of work. It's bad even for the teachers. I wish it was better. Government funding needs to deal more closely with these issues. I can hold out hope that Obama will help. I really hope someone up there does.
