Enrolling in Kindergarten

All over the country the Charter schools do the best job of giving children a good education. In Oregon the parents are included in the school circula. Go into a classroom and observe. The teacher is really important.
One year I had to take my child out of school...which was a good one because they did not have a decent second grade teacher. That year we paid for a Summerhill type private school.

greatschoools.net was what we used. I'd also talk to other moms at the park who may have kids who go to those schools, that's probably always your best resource! I like charter schools. It is nice to have friends in the neighborhood that go to the same school, I've had both experiences. But they can also play sports, go to dance, join other clubs with neighbor kids too. We looked into switching districts too, and ours just had you apply to your home school first then apply for a boundary exception. No penalties at all.

Don't discount your local school automatically. Good parent involvement can help, you may get there and find that your local school is great. Maybe take a few days to volunteer at the school before your kids get there... see what you think of the teachers, the overall learning community. Meet with the principal, talk to him/her about your concerns on the ratings. There may be an action plan already in place to raise scores or address other issues.

Check out greatschools.org. Its a good place to start. Good luck :-)

You might consider observing the schools/classrooms you are interested in. Call and make an appointment. Then you can see the teachers in action, check out the facilities and classroom management in person before deciding.

I agree with previous poster. Go to the school and talk to them and get your questions answered. We send our son to a Charter School and we absolutely love it. We went to their open house and talked to the teachers and talked to other parents that had their kids there too.

I think it would definitely be a great idea to spend some time in the school within your district - talk to the principal, go to a PTA meeting, talk to the kids even, volunteer in the programs that are important to you (I love working with my daughter's music teacher). However, if you do want to move your children to a school outside of your neighborhood, be prepared to spend a lot of time driving them around. We just moved to a new district, and although I don't have a problem with the school, they do not offer a full-day Kindergarten, and the school in our old neighborhood does. I opted to keep her at her school in our old neighborhood, even though it is a 30 minute drive to and from every day. The paperwork is simple enough, but since we were already enrolled in that school, it wasn't a problem to keep my daughter there for the remainder of the school year (as to not completely turn her world upside down with change!) I'm not sure what it would be like as someone who never lived in the district/wasn't planning on moving there, etc., but I'm sure the school districts would give you all the information you needed in order to make an informed decision. Everyone's idea of a good education is different, so take a look at all of your options closely - and if all else fails, you can move them to another school. Thank you for being concerned about their education though! Not enough parents are these days.

If you are looking at the school ranking done by the state it can be misleading. Often the ranking follow how nice of an area the school is located. The test scores and how well children do in school have as much to do with the parents and the teachers. Gresham being a diverse area with apartment to nice home can give a good school a bad ranking, because some parents aren't behind their kids. The kids that do well in school, are the ones that get help at home. If you can't get them into a charter school it might not be the end of the world. Lotteries for these schools can be hard to get into special considering you need to win twice. As far as kids in the neighborhood get your boys into sports. Soccer this fall is where you will meet the parents and your kids their group of friends. Then it's in the winter basketball to baseball in the spring.

Before sending your child to a school that is not in the district in which you live, you may wish to consider moving within the boundaries of said district. If the public school district does not accept non-residents (the vast majority don't as public education is taxpayer funded and only the residents of that district are entitled to the services the district provides) and you 'sneak' your children in, be prepared to back pay the per pupil expenditure. Legally the district has every right to collect this form of 'tuition'.

As far as checking on the schools, it is best to go to your state website and check out the schools' standardized test results, which typically include a lot of data regarding the district. Unfortunately many parent ranking sites are usually bombarded with the unhappy parent's experiences and tend not to be objective.

would love to see the responses!

Go and visit the schools and take a tour. Thats the only way you will know. I wouldn't trust a website or other's opinions---I would go there myself to find out.

M

I would go and observe the school that they would normally be attending. Ask to speak to an administrator about their ratings. See what a class is like. Often times schools with low ratings get that rating because their state scores are low. This could be due to things like high immigration rate where students are not testing in their native language, and various other reasons. I would ask parents in your community. There might be some FABULOUS teachers working at that "failing" school. I would check it out before you write it off. It is much simpler to have kids attend a school in their neighborhood especially since you would b responsible for driving them to and from their out of neighborhood school. Though I do applaud you for trying to give your kids the best education.