This is what school choice does to people --

[uncommon]

I live in a city that has school choice. There are 7 or 8 elementary schools.

I moved here from a town with one elementary school in order to share custody with my ex-husband - literally out of the kindness of my heart.

He went and registered her for school as I would have had to drive over an hour to come and do it and he could do it any time.

He registered her at a school 4 miles away that offers no school bus because it is not her neighborhood school (for either of our addresses).

I went in today to transfer her since I now commute 1.2 hours to work and cannot be home when she needs a ride to and from school.

Her neighborhood school, which is the best in the city (part of the reason I moved to this particular neighborhood) and about .5 miles away and easily walked with her babysitter (who does not drive), is FULL.

The school system refuses to bus her, so if I am lucky in an hour she *might* be transferred to the second closest school which is still a mile away.

If we didn't have school choice, all of the kids could go to their neighborhood school.

This is a nightmare.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

1. Sounds like the problem is with you and your ex not being able to communicate.

And has nothing to do with school choice.

[uncommon]

2. That is *a* problem --

he should have actually told me what was going on - but the schools she should be going to are full, which shouldn't be an issue when kids automatically go to a certain school.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

5. Of course they're going to be full NOW.

That wouldn't have been the case if done properly from the start. If there's an empty seat at a good school, it will be filled - that's common sense and not a problem with the system.

Put another way - which kid are you going to kick out of that school to accommodate your kid, knowing that you didn't do enrollment right in the first place?

[MattBaggins]

4. No it sounds like she nailed the problem on the head

Sounds like you have a problem.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

6. I don't have any problems

But I also make sure I get these things right the first time and don't wait until school starts to fix them.

[uncommon]

12. It hasn't started here -

and it wasn't my doing - as I said, her father, who should be fully capable of this task, did it several weeks ago.

In any case, it worked out - I got them to send a bus but she still has to walk 1/2 mile to the bus stop. Luckily my brother can take her.

[Kolesar]

3. Dont be afraid to go up the chain of command

Call school board members, if you must.
I don't have children, so I am just throwing out ideas.

[SoCalDem]

7. And neighborhood elementary schools used to be small & plentiful

so that neighborhood kids could all walk together for that short distance...no bus necessary.

They were not multi-million dollar schools with every "shiny" available, but they did have dedicated teachers who pretty much knew their jobs were "safe", and who may have taught several kids from the same neighborhood families...and maybe some of the parents.

Suburban sprawl ended that way of schooling for millions of families.

It sucks, but we are pretty much stuck with the "system" we have now:(

[slackmaster]

8. Schools were plentiful when I was in elementary school, but kids were more plentiful

Class sizes averaged about 32 pupils. Portable buildings abounded.

[SoCalDem]

10. People used to have more children

..job security for teachers:)

[slackmaster]

11. I was born at a time when the post-World War II baby boom was near its peak

There were four other boys in my first grade class who had the same first name as mine.

[w4rma]

9. We're not stuck with this "system". Fixing problems like this was what folks thought when Obama said

he was going to help revamp schools. The vast majority of Americans do not want their schools privatized and taken out of their neighborhoods.

[uncommon]

13. Exactly - ironically, we have neighborhood elementary schools here - a ton

of them. But school choice means that the desirable ones fill up with no preference given to the kids who live there.

[Obamanaut]

14. self delete