Jenn's Scoop to Denver

Posted on 14. Apr, 2009 by JM in Posts

Hello world. Or better yet, hello Denver for now!  

We are bringing you the scoop today because, well, there is a need for it!  

Here is the premise: This is the scoop about getting your head wrapped around the school “situation” in Denver that can be maddening, confusing, and downright frustrating.  So we are bringing you this blog in order to provide some insight and some relief in your quest to do right by your children when it comes to their early education. 

Here is my (Jenn’s) story and then you will hear from Kerri:

When our family first moved to Denver almost four years ago, our son was 7 months old.  Little did we know that we should have been investigating the school situation here when he was a mere zygote.  

My husband and I began our citywide edu-tour when Andrew was about a year old and we were ready to relinquish him to the world.  What we didn’t realize, was that getting your child into pre-school, or even daycare for that matter, is like training for getting into college, but it’s the parents choice and not the child’s choice….this time!  

We visited in-house day care facilities, “corporate” daycare facilities, ECE programs at public schools, Montessori and non-Montessori situations and what we found, for the most part, was that waiting lists were years long.  Huh?   How were we supposed to know about this?  As first time parents, this seemed preposterous.  How could anyone get back to life or a career  if they had to wait year or longer to get proper care for their child?

After a short stint in an in-home facility, we found ourselves wanting more structure and “real school” environment for our child.  What we weren’t sure of was where that would be.  We found ourselves on waiting lists for several locations, but came across a Montessori School that accepted children from 6 weeks to 6 years old.  The school had just moved locations to a new building and had the space now for children in their Toddler Community (18 months to 3 years).  This was it!  Now we just had to wait for him to become “of age”.  I never thought I’d want to have my first born hurry up and get older so quickly but alas, he did.  

It was a tough transition but like they always say, it’s probably harder for the parent than it is for the child.  Our 18 month was, and still is, a mama’s boy so it took several months for him to get into the groove of sharing space and time with 14 other children.  This coming May (2009) he will have been in this school for three years.  Not in our wildest dreams could we have imagined that our now 4.5 year old would have needed or received the education that he has gotten – we are thrilled.  We owe a lot to his teachers; that is for sure.  We also have high hopes for our 2 year old son, Torin, who has been at the same school since he was 9 months old.  We shall see!  

This leads me to my next point.  Now that Andrew is 4.5 years old, the Kindergarten and Elementary school whirlwind has begun. Once again, we find ourselves in a flurry of school tours that include the gamut of public, private, faith based and charter, (see upcoming related article). There is also DPS Advanced Kindergarten and Early Entrance, testing and applications to think about. Since Andrew’s birthday is in late October, he just misses the deemed October 1st cutoff date for the Denver Public School system.  This is a date that a lot of private schools follow as well.

I find myself often thinking that I need a matrix for all of this crap.   A simple Excel spreadsheet will not do (though I do have one of these).  The problem is that tuition changes from year to year, the rules change from year to year, as do the tour dates, the due dates, the public school zones and the choicing process.  It’s a moving target that requires the power of something more complex to rein in all of the data.

So, where does that leave us all?  We hope that the insight and information you seek about the schooling dilemma can be found here.  At least we tried.

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