By LEONARA LaPETER, Times Staff Writer
Published August 29, 2004 Situation: Staff writer Leonora LaPeter wanted to get her daughter into kindergarten at a magnet school.
(This article originally appeared Sept. 14, 2003)
I wish I could bottle all the anxiety I felt over selecting a school for my daughter, Lauren, and toss it in the ocean or something.
Because in the end, it was all a crap shoot that we really had no control over. So when I look back on all that stress I experienced, it's a little like looking back at a bad break-up years later and wondering what all the fuss was about.
Still, there are some things you can do to improve your chances of finding and getting in the best school. Luck plays a big part, no doubt about it. But sheer effort can also put you over the top.
My daughter was entering kindergarten and, of course, I wanted the best school for her. So I visited about 10 schools and saw vast differences in quality of both facilities and educational offerings.
It's true. The magnet and fundamental schools are the haves. Many of the other schools are the have-nots.
So I filled out applications for the three magnet schools in southern Pinellas County, Bay Point, Perkins and Melrose, and the three fundamentals, Lakeview, Bay Vista and Pasadena. A month went by and then one day, the letter arrived in the mail.
She hadn't gotten into any of them. She was No. 18 on the Bay Point waiting list, No. 54 on Perkins, No. 26 on Bay Vista's. I tried to view this positively until I started calling around to other parents and found that just about everyone had done better than us.
One friend's child had gotten into Perkins, Bay Vista and Bay Point. It seemed so unfair. She had three schools to choose from. We had none.
I waited for the 10-day shakeup period in which students accepted or rejected their positions, hoping she would slip in at Bay Point because I knew it was our best shot and many of Lauren's friends were there.
Since I work at the newspaper, I had access to the most up-to-date information so I pumped our School Board reporter mercilessly. When would the information come out? How many spots were available at each school? How many black slots? How many non-black slots?
After the shakeup, Lauren moved up to No. 5. And there she stayed.
So I filled out a choice application, picking again Perkins and Bay Point as my No. 1 and No. 2 schools (I could do that because they were in my area), and then adding three more schools, the brand-new James B. Sanderlin and nearby North Shore and Shore Acres elementaries.
More waiting. More stress. More hounding. And now a new thing: I was calling Bay Point to see if she had moved up on the waiting list.
My co-workers looked on at this with amusement.
I was obsessed.
I figured out, for example, that based on the number of choice openings and applications at Perkins (provided by the district to the School Board reporter), that Lauren had surely gotten into Perkins with my choice application. But it turned out that too many students had been admitted to Perkins and after this was revealed in a news story, the school district cut those positions.
When I finally got my letter, I had gotten into, er, I mean Lauren had gotten into James B. Sanderlin. I was disappointed because I knew I, I mean she, had been close to Perkins, but at the same time I liked James B. Sanderlin and viewed this as a positive development. But I still wanted her at Bay Point because that's where several of her friends were going.
So I called Bay Point every few weeks. As time passed, I relaxed, knowing there was nothing I could do. And then one day in June when I least expected it, I got the call.
She had made it into Bay Point.
When I look back on it, I realize the Pinellas County School District taught me a lesson: There's no use worrying over something you can't control.
