By KEVIN McGEEVER, Times Staff Writer
Published August 29, 2004 SITUATION: Suburban News Editor Kevin McGeever has a daughter who left a tiny alternative private school for a big public middle school.
(This article originally appeared Sept. 14, 2003)
My 11-year-old daughter left a private school of four dozen students for a public middle school of more than 1,500 kids all creeping toward the precipice of adolescence.
What in heaven's name were we thinking? That our lucky day had finally come.
For years, we had played the magnet lottery. And lost. Time after time after time.
In three years - or was it four? - we couldn't get in the arts magnet at Perkins or the math and science magnet at Bay Point or the fundamental program at Lakeview. As our children aged, we moved on and failed to win the middle school lottery for the arts program at John Hopkins or the fundamental program at Southside.
We were blessed to have other choices - if we stretched, we could afford private school. And that's what we had chosen for years for our two children. Why? We were unimpressed with what were then our zoned schools, the size of the classrooms, the anecdotal testimony of parents.
A few years ago, there was a third-grade opening for Olivia at Melrose Elementary, then a new magnet program with the promise of a new school in the next two years. We admired the magnet coordinator and the head of the foreign language curriculum, but the school year was already two weeks old and Olivia was thriving at Sunflower School in Gulfport.
By her fourth-grade year, we declined to enter the lottery. Both children were established in their schools. A change at this point in their academic careers seemed unnecessarily traumatic.
We rustled up the money and kept our children in private school because we thought that was best for them and we could manage the expense.
And then this year we won.
Incoming sixth-grader Olivia got into two magnet middle schools - Hopkins and Bay Point. As a sibling, seventh-grader Sean was in the top five on each school's waiting list.
Olivia is at Hopkins now, making the quantum leap from tiny to really big. When she walks toward the school with her backpack, it's as if she is an ant marching with thousands of workers toward the anthill.
At Sunflower she called her teachers by their first names. At Hopkins, she would probably end up in the principal's office if she tried that.
To ease her transition, she spent a day at the bigger school seeing teachers and larger classes in action. She talked to friends and soccer teammates who went to Hopkins. We attended a year-end theater presentation.
Before we could fret the first week, she had adjusted. Ready for the changing classes, loving the guitar, keyboard and vocal courses.
Sean stayed at LCC Day School. He enjoyed a day at Hopkins shadowing another student, but ultimately couldn't wrap himself around a transfer.
SITUATION: Suburban News Editor Kevin McGeever has a daughter who left a tiny alternative private school for a big public middle school.