Choosing our Future Elementary School (Part 3)

The Final Shortlist

In part 1 of this series I shared with you my 4 main expectations from the elementary school that my girls will attend viz:

1. Christian faith
2. Confident body image: 
3. Multiple career/lifestyle options
4. Social savvy  /Diversity

The first 3 criteria are easy to evaluate on paper and that's what Part 2 of this series covers. The last criteria - diversity- can only be evaluated in person. The best way to do this is by visiting the school either informally or through organised open house events. 

By the time I finished the steps highlighted in Part 2, I had a shortlist of 3 public schools - 1 Montessori, 1 traditional learning center and the 1 we were zoned to. I also had around 6 private schools that I intended to visit. My primary objective in visiting these schools was to evaluate if they were as good as they seemed on paper. I was looking for an atmosphere of respect for parents and students regardless of similarities or differences. 

This is the one step where I would say the most important thing in to go with your gut feel, forget being PC (politically correct). That's really hard for me to describe, so instead I'll highlight the different things I saw that led to me dropping or keeping a school on the list.

• No discernible parking spot for parents and a sign asking them not to park in the school as that was reserved for staff members: Eliminated for the disrespectful tone of the posted sign and the extreme discomfort drop offs and pickups could be
• Too small playground for school size: In speaking  with friends' kids, I know that some schools schedule outside times on alternate days for classes due to limited playground size. I don't like this
• I was sitting in a coffee shop beside this school when they closed for the day and all the students, parents and harassed nannies coming into the shop reminded me of an episode of Real Housewives of Orange County. Eliminated for wrong, posh vibe.
• I asked the school principal about "diversity in the students and staff members" and he/she stuttered for almost a minute before mumbling that they do have one member of staff who's male so there's some gender diversity there. Duh! if I, the only black person in the crowd, asking you about diversity makes you nervous, I don't even want to know what your problem is.
• Sometimes I don't ask about diversity. I just walk down the hallway and look at school pictures. If in 10 years worth of pictures representing over 3000 students, I see just 1 minority kid in the 2013 picture.... that's a showstopper. I expect the student body racial demographics to reflect the racial demographics of the city and in the last ten years, more than 20% of the people in Calgary have identified as visible minorities including 2% as black. 
• Level of (dis)organisation in the open house. Starting late with no acceptable reason, poorly put together presentations, no clear roles for staff members hosting the event. My thinking is if you can organize an event as simple as an open house (which is meant to show you at your best), how will you be able to prepare the kids in your care to be tomorrow's leaders
• A thick layer of dust on the preschool teachers' equipment that sends the message to me that nobody cares to take ownership
• Staff:Student ratios. Easy enough when touring classrooms to count the number of student names per class and see if the ratio is optimal or not

Was it all bad? Not at all but I can tell you that the school that was at the bottom of my list after my evaluations from part 2 shot to number 1 after I visited because the vibe was jaw-droppingly amazing. 

Where do we stand today? I have a very short list of 3 elementary schools - each with their unique strengths - that I would be happy for my kids to attend and if I get this right, we won't have to do this again till 2029  ;)

This is the final part of the Choosing our Future Elementary School Series.
In Search of our future school series
Part 1: Defining your expectations
Part 2: Evaluating the schools that meet those expectations
Part 3: Building the final shortlist of elementary schools

Choosing our Future Elementary School (Part 2)

Yesterday I posted about the first step for choosing an elementary school for us. That first step was defining our expectations. I narrowed down my expectations to 4 and in this post, I will highlight the steps I took to evaluating how the schools available in my city met some of those expectations.

School systems
In Calgary (and most big cities) this consists of public, private and charter school systems. Depending on how they are run, charter systems combine the best parts of both the public and private school systems

School Districts
There can be one or more school districts within each of the school systems. For example, the public school system in Calgary includes the Calgary Board of Education, the Palliser school district and the Catholic School District

Now that the definitions are out of the way, here's the 10-Step program for evaluating schools

1. Determine which school districts we're qualified to attend and which we are not. We're not qualified to attend the Catholic School District in Calgary based on our tax designation
2. Obtain and compare academic ratings either through a private rating system like the Fraser Institute or by checking the state/province test results
3. Compile a list of public, private and charter schools that meet your academic requirements. My requirements are that the school be ranked among the top 20% in the province of Alberta.
4. Check the state or province's youth sports website. Which schools are featured regularly and which are not? If sports participation is important to you, give one negative point to all the schools that have no showings whatsoever in the youth sports arena
5. Check the private schools. Eliminate the ones that are not affordable for your family (we're talking twins here). BUT before eliminating based on tuition only, confirm that there are no scholarships your family could qualify for.
6. Check the charter schools' websites and admissions criteria. Put a "?" on those that have extremely long wait lists that you're not on already. There's a school here that informed me that we're number 300+ on the wait list for kindergarten. Considering that they have around 60 available spots, I'm not holding my breath for a phone call
7. Spend a few hours on the public school board's website and read the long, boring reports on school closures, planned new schools, school capacity utilization numbers, zoned neighborhoods, class sizes etc. Put a "?" on schools that are over-capacity and students can only get in by a lottery system.Why? Even if you live within the neighborhood, you're not guaranteed a spot. And if you don't get a spot, your kids will be bused to the nearest school with spare capacity. In Calgary, this usually translates into a one hour bus ride to a school that's not a high-performer
8. If a second language is important to you, narrow down the school list even further
9. Map your current or future neighborhood and your current or future workplace to the schools on your shortlist. Eliminate schools that are outside of driving/busing range and zoned to neighborhoods you will not be moving to. 
10. Trade off: If there's no school left on your list, start again with more relaxed criteria. If there are too many schools on your list, be more stringent with your criteria. Bottom line for me was that I wanted just one likely public elementary school that the girls would attend. Then all the charter, private and alternative schools were evaluated against this public school. 

This is part 2 of my In Search of our Future School Series.

In Search of our future school series
In Search of our future school series
Part 1: Defining your expectations
Part 2: Evaluating the schools that meet those expectations
Part 3: Building the final shortlist of elementary schools