I think helping your child receive a good education is one of the biggest gifts you can bestow on him. Right now I am wrestling with the decision over how to have our Wee Beasts educated.

We live in Kansas City, MO, and if you aren’t familiar with the school district here, do a quick Google search and prepare to be shocked and appalled at what you find.

I do not want my kids to go through the KC public schools. And since we just moved one year ago, I’m not ready to pack up and move across the state line into Kansas (even though it’s just two blocks away) just for the sake of being in a different school district. So here are the options I’m considering:

Homeschooling

I really want to homeschool my kids. It’s something I’ve wanted to do since before I had kids. I told The Doc my dreams before we were even married. But he was a medical school student at the time, and I was the breadwinner and couldn’t even imagine not going to work every day.

Times have changed, though. We now have two beasts, 3 and 4 years old. The Doc’s business is growing and we now even live in a house that would have space for a dedicated “school room.”

I’ve been reading up on the laws in Missouri and what homeschooling is like here. I’ve even found a plan that I really love. The K12 program, which is an online public school. BUT…it’s not in our state yet. Kansas, yes. Missouri, no. Of course. BAH! And now I’ve started a home-based business, and I’m getting new clients on a regular basis. I’m worried I won’t have the ability to juggle client time and school time if I’m trying to cram both in during the day.

Private Schooling

I took Big A to an Open House at a local private school last winter. He loved it and was so excited to have a new school to go to. Poor kid didn’t realize he had another 18 months to go before he could start there, but private schools tend to have waiting lists so we had to check into it early. It’s a small school, with the current Kindergarten class consisting of six kids. Yes, you read that right. Six. 6. That’s it. They have plans to grow it some so that he might start with 8-12 kids in a class. I think it’s awesome that he would get so much individual attention that way, and that the teacher would really know how he’s doing in each area and could tailor work with him to be exactly what he needs.

It’s a great option, but I decided to keep exploring what else is available to us.

Charter Schooling

I just discovered an amazing charter school yesterday. It’s a short seven-minute drive from our house. Even though it’s technically a KC public school, it’s run by Central Missouri State University.

The best part is that it’s a language immersion school. Ah-may-zing! I’ve always wanted to speak another language. Despite owning every Menudo album in Spanish in my junior high years, taking Spanish in high school for two years and one year in college, it didn’t “stick.” Surprising? No. If you don’t use it, you lose it.

But with an immersion school, you use the language all day, every day. For everything. Starting from “hello” (or “hola,” “bonjour,” or “gutten tag”) on the first day of kindergarten, the teachers only speak to the kids in another language. I wish I could go to an immersion school and learn a new language. But since I can’t, I could send my beasts to one.

Learning a second language expands your mind. It allows you to pick up even more languages later in life fairly easily. And with native-speaking teachers from around the world, it would be a phenomenal cultural experience. Oh, and most importantly, test scores from the school’s students show that they are really smart and do very well in school. They tend to be recruited by top-notch private schools and colleges later, with many receiving sizable scholarships because of their grades. YEA!
So…

What to do?

The charter school usually has more kids apply than they have spots for. So kids are enrolled based on a lottery system. That means I can apply for one of the spots, but the decision is really out of my hands. IF Big A gets a spot, Little A would automatically get one the following year. IF he doesn’t get a spot, we’re out of luck.

Then my decision would be between homeschooling and private school. Depending on how my business is going (growing), I might be able to hire some staff and only need to be in a management role. I’d be able to homeschool without too much conflict.

Realistically, the decision my end up being made for me by life circumstances. But I’m a thinking, a brooder, and very contemplative, let’s-just-weigh-all-the-options-and-compare-pros-and-cons-of-each kinda girl. So I’ll be thinking of this day and night for the next few months.

If you’ve wrestled with this decision yourself, I would love some feedback, advice, thoughts, stories to know how you handled it, and if you’re happy with the choice you made.