Hallelujah!

Since my last post was about Ben and Kindergarten I figure this post can be about Ben and Kindergarten, too. It may sound weird that I had such a spiritual experience today getting Ben into school, but it is not an insignificant lesson to me and has been a testimony building day.

It's been a little bit of a struggle working with the school system to get a transfer out of Ben's home campus. I posted a story about what happened when I went to that campus last year to qualify him for PreK and it's way too lengthy to write out again, but it sums up why we don't want him there. In a nutshell, we were reversely discriminated against and bullied while filling out paperwork. I was minding my own business and accused of being favored because I was white. Anyway, it was so bad I called John on our way home and told him I never wanted to step foot on that campus again, even though the counselor begged me to come back. (We didn't qualify by a very miniscule dollar amount and could have tried again but I was not going to do it). I've been a little terrified to even consider sending Ben there after that experience because I didn't want him to get stuck there. I mean, what if a transfer never came through? What if our condo doesn't sell for a year? I didn't wan tot take any chances.

But like I said in my previous post, work, life, whatever got in the way of us getting our house ready to sell. And August was looming like a horror movie villain. We did the right thing back in April by getting on the transfer list for the two schools we wanted. That was not panning out. I called 4 or 5 different other schools within a 15-minute driving radius and got us on the transfer list. Nothing open. I talked to a friend of mine about trading marketing design with a friend of hers who runs a Kindergarten certified preschool. All of our options were running out and I didn't feel good about any of them. Except registering him at Roquemore.

This was obviously the last thing in the world I wanted to do. I mean, I told myself a year ago I'd never go back, and now the only answer to the prayer after prayer after prayer we gave was to go there? Friends on Facebook reassured me he'd be fine. A good ward friend who's a retired AISD educator told me he'd be okay for a few months but to transfer if we got a call. So last night while we were laying in bed talking about it we decided that I'd go register Ben today and he would start school on Friday.

So that's what I did. It wasn't the most pleasant experience. There were a couple of other families doing the same thing, the secretary that approved everything was nowhere to be found, I was dealing with an overtired Shelby and an anxious Ben. The front desk person was a substitute who'd never done this kind of paperwork before, so it took over an hour to get him registered. I saw different classes filing through the halls and not one white kid. I'm all for ethnic diversity but there was that experience stuck in the back of my head of my fear of Ben getting discriminated against because he's white and he's smart. But it was done. My phone had died because I let Ben play Angry Birds while we were waiting, and we still had to go to Target and Office Depot to get the rest of his school supplies (how hard should it be to find folders with BRADS??), Shelby was screaming and I was just tired.

I charged my phone for a couple of minutes in the car but it died as soon as we got inside Target. After finding two of the 10 things I needed we got in the car and I sat and let it charge for a while. I had three voice mails. One from my friend Betsy asking if I was going to Primer (the private preschool) to Meet the Teacher, my other friend Noelle asking me why Betsy was saying we were going to Primer when I told her we were going to Roquemore, and lastly my friend Julie who had a friend on Facebook say that Hill Elementary was looking for transfers to fill empty Kindergarten spots. Wait, what?

Earlier this morning I was on AISD's website looking for school supply lists and came across the transfer page where they announced that a freeze was put on all AISD campuses and that no transfers were being considered until September 19th. I was like GREAT, Ben gets to go to the ghetto school for almost a month before we'd even know if he'd get into another school.... So at first I brushed off Julie's message because it could have been from the day before and Hill is one of two Exemplary elementary schools in all of Arlington. But as we pulled into the Office Depot parking lot I decided to call anyway.

It turns out that attendance was low at Hill this year and they were endanger of losing a Kindergarten teacher. The district gave them exclusive privilege of accepting transfers so they won't have to lose a teacher. I was completely shocked. I never even considered calling Hill before because I thought for certain they'd have transfers. It's a little farther than the schools we were looking at but it has awesome test scores, it actually has a PTA which Roquemore doesn't have. There was an up-to-date calendar on their website with all the current events. Which included all of the things we could have hope for Ben to have in a school experience.

A friend of mine said something on Facebook about how this was our first kid to be in school and that they're the experimental child and that by the time more of our kids are in school we get it figured out. For some reason I took this personally like I wasn't prepared or that I wasn't doing what was best or making too big of a deal and I should just go with the school he was in. But I didn't want to settle! We have prayed more times than I could ever count and our friends and family members have prayed because Ben is a great kid and he deserves to be in a good school environment where he can be nurtured and it was so important to me to find it. I needed to take a leap of faith and do what I thought Heavenly Father wanted us to do and go ahead and register him at his home school. All of this may sound so unimportant to some people, but it means a lot to us to set the standard early for our kid's education. I know it is no coincidence that Julie called me today and we were immediately told we could come in the morning to register him and he can go to school tomorrow.

It's just awesome. I was so excited I cried. Ben was elated because he could tell I was so happy and he knew that was a good thing. I called John and cried, I called my mom and didn't cry, then I called my friend Sharon and cried (because she has been one of the biggest champions of Ben getting into a good school and has helped me a ton figuring out what to do). So thank you for the prayers. Ben starts Kindergarten tomorrow and I could not be more happy about it.