Parents sharing the process of searching for a school in Greater Philadelphia. What kind of school are you looking for? Charter, public, private, city, suburban?
I have written about the factors involved in my family’s school choice extensively. Still, trying to figure out the best school is a decision that doesn’t take place in a vacuum of school characteristics. A slew of other factors have to be accounted for, especially when adding a potential relocation into the mix. Financial considerations, commute length, neighborhoods, buying/selling/renting a place to live, and career are just a few of the factors that come into play that have little to nothing to do with your child and their school.
Entering the school choice process, I assumed that my family was moving. This assumption had nothing to do with schools. We are outgrowing our house and our commutes are longer than we would like them to be. My wife and I took this assumption as an opportunity to research schools all over the city and the suburbs, including in our own neighborhood which we love. With 18 months to go before my oldest started school (Fall, 2011), we had a nice plan in place.
Or so I thought. How does the saying go? Even the best laid plans? In February, I was laid off from work. I started a new job last month, but the experience has understandably altered our perspective. We can still afford to buy a new house, but our finances have obviously been impacted as well. Plus, it turns out that my kids not only don’t mind sharing a room, they are thriving on it. And to top it off, the housing market is terrible and we are anticipating not being able to get as much for our house as we’d like. All of these developments got us thinking–can squeeze a few more years in this house? The upsides are clear–we can afford even more when we upgrade and we will have a better sense of our kids’ needs when identifying their ‘permanent’ school. Plus, we love being here, the house where our children were born.
We haven’t decided what we are doing yet. This process is so complex, so fraught with emotionally sensitive land mines. Part of me thinks that the decision to stay put is a retreat from the complexities of the process. Identifying a school nearby limits our school choices, and then of course I wonder if that’s a good idea. On the other hand, as I have written before, in a counterintuitive sense, maybe less choice is actually better. In a process influenced by a crazy list of factors, including neighborhoods, real estate costs, peer pressure, and even the movies, the possibility of being able to set some choices aside and dive more deeply into a smaller subset of options is appealing.
In the coming weeks, I will be posting a series of articles from a guest blogger, Lisa Marchiano. Lisa is a homeschooling parent who is contributing her ideas about how she chose to homeschool and how it has impacted her life and the lives of her family. Reading her drafts, I have been struck by the vastness of the factors involved in her families’ choice. These factors are completely distinct from mine, yet I found them to be powerfully resonant. I had a preconception that parents who homeschool simply don’t believe in traditional schooling methods. Though that is in part true, Lisa’s key factors for choosing homeschooling are much more nuanced. I’ll let you learn the details when her work is published. Her drafts made me revisit a post from another guest blogger, Marta Rowh, who wrote about the importance of parents frankly discussing school choice values as early as possible in the school selection process. Between’s reading Lisa’s draft and my own life’s twists and turns over the past year, I realized that even if you have ‘the talk’ early on like Marta advocates, you have to be sure that you keep having it often as you learn more about schools and as life changes.
Even if you think homeschooling is not right for you, I strongly encourage you to take a look at what Lisa has to say about it. Look for her first post later this week.
***UPDATED 8/17/2010 9:15 AM*** Added links to Lisa Machiano’s author page and to her first post.
Len Lipkin
PSS Community