After playing a bit of phone tag I finally managed to set up an appointment to come down to the school Niko will be attending this fall to enroll him. I had to bring his birth certificate and his medical card. If we didn’t have state insurance we would have had to bring other documents. The school wasn’t overly concerned with proving our address, I think, because it’s not a super great super desirable school. I’m not saying it’s a bad school, but some CPS neighborhood schools are HOT SHIT and people lie and scheme to get into them if they don’t live in the neighborhood.
The school’s 4 blocks (half a mile) away, which means I’ll be racking up 2 miles of walking a day once he starts, between drop offs and pick ups. We left early today to get to the appointment, because 4 year olds can be jerks on walks, and he kept insisting he was feeling pukey and needed to sit for a moment in the cool, cool shade under a tall, tall tree. Ha ha, what? Only he DOES barf when he gets over heated sometimes, only it usually involves 1) a car or 2) massive running around.
Despite our frequent stops, we got to the school early to enroll this boy.
It was interesting. The staff made 2 basic assumptions about our family, based largely on the neighborhood: 1) that we’re on state insurance (which is true, and we might continue to be on it (albeit paying for it) when Nesko’s eligible for insurance through work, we’ll see) and 2) that we don’t speak English at home (which would be true if my FIL had his way). Most kids coming into that school take a language fluency exam to determine which level of ESL classroom they’ll be in, but Niko’s really fluent in English (it’s his primary language) so he’ll just be in the English speaking class. School starts toward the end of August, there’s a class size of 22, and instead of buying supplies off a school supply list we outfit Niko with a book bag, give the school paper towels and tissues and hand soap, and pay a fee. That fee covers school supplies and a school-branded t-shirt they wear on field trips and for gym class. There’s two preschool classes, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, and it lasts 2 1/2 hours. I signed him up for the morning class so he can come home and take a nap. I got a good vibe from the staff we met with. They seem very open, friendly, and caring. It sounded like they required Niko to be present (as opposed to “you can bring him if you need to” or whatever) but they didn’t really interact with him and instead he played with dinosaurs and then a really cool dollhouse while I filled out paperwork.
There was… a lot of paperwork.
I was kind of nervous or something… I’m dealing with some ~~ANXIETY~~ lately and being thrust into a new situation of enrolling my baby in school kind of ramped that up… and my hand writing was AWFUL. I was like “ahhh what am I dooooing I’m writing illegibly…. hand stop that. write nicely. hand! what the fuuuuuuck. I CAN PENMANSHIP I SWEAR IT!!!”
The regional gifted center is directly across the street and has a pretty nice (and completely unshaded and thus hot) playground. After all the boring paperwork I took Niko over there and he played with other kids and ran around for almost an hour.
My only concern with the enrollment process was that they asked some personal medical questions — which I understand the need for– but in a very public way. So you ask me, you know, is there any history of mental health issues in the family and I say yes… and I didn’t go into my own business because I was flustered but everyone around me (including other parents) heard what I said. And they asked why I had a C-Section. Some other medical stuff. Internets, you know I bloviate endlessly about the horrific mysteries of my gross body, but that’s somehow different from dropping info bombs in front of the parents of Niko’s future classmates. On the internet I discuss shitting my bed immediately after having a C-Section. In real life, I try to abstain from the grossity. Given the set up (a bunch of grown ass adults crouched on tiny chairs around circular tables in a class room) I don’t see how that could be prevented, though.
The teacher he will probably be having next year asked that we practice with him writing his own name. He’s gotten good at his nickname, but we’ll work on the whole name.
We need to get him a physical and dental visit and have the appropriate doctors fill out paperwork, but don’t need to do a vision or hearing screening (the school handles that), which is nice. They also offer flu vaccines.
Anyway, after the enrollment and playground playing we stopped at Dunkin Donuts/Baskin Robbins for ice cream (which, as usual, turned into a donut) where I realized I didn’t have 1) my bank card or 2) my transit card. WIN! THIS IS WHAT WINNING LOOKS LIKE! Luckily I had a $5 Visa Gift Card that had enough of a balance on it to pay for our donuts, and when my emergency transit card turned out to be expired the driver just waved us through. Now Niko’s sitting around in the living room in his underpants, eating ice cream and playing with dinosaurs, and what I thought was a sunburn on his arms is pretty much faded, whew.
So.
Preschool in August.
Wow.
Technorati Tags: 4 year old, chicago, chicago public schools, parenting, pre school
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