SCHOOL

This story could begin in many places; however, if I take it back to the beginning and explain how we got where we are today, it makes more sense because homeschooling was not initially on our radar.

If you want the short story, public school was a hot mess, not because of an agenda or radical teachers. It was just a mess.

Keep reading if you want the extended version. You may be able to relate to it in some way or learn something from it, so you don't have to make the same mistakes we did.

Strap in because this post may be a little long.

It all began when we lived in Texas, and Olivia became old enough to attend school. Due to her dad's active duty status, she qualified for a half-day preschool program in North Texas. It was only half a day, but it was better than nothing, allowing me to spend some one-on-one time with Noah.

I thought it was great because Olivia attended school with kids who were primarily Indian, and English was not their first language. It gave her this beautiful introduction to a culture different from her own.

Then we moved to East Texas, and it was time to begin Kindergarten. It was a highly-rated public school, and even though we were in Texas at the height of Covid, the kids were required to be masked. Trying to understand your teacher through a mask is a total wash when you are learning phonics.

Olivia was placed with the best veteran teacher, but she was pregnant. This wasn't a problem until she was due during the school year and was out for weeks.

Once she finally returned, she was sent off for training, and the substitutes could only do so much to fill in.

It was honestly a mess. We had a sit-down meeting with the principal and teacher to agree on when the teacher would be present and if it was even worth sending Olivia that day.

This should have been my first wake-up call to homeschool, yet we kept trying.

We then moved to Florida, and Olivia began first grade. She went into a public magnet school, which meant that the local kids that are zoned for that area attend and that any gaps would be filled with kids that applied from outside that zone.

I was new to what all of this meant. There are things like public schools, magnet schools, dedicated magnet schools, whole school magnet schools, and a school within a school that was a magnet.

If you are confused by reading this, I was, too. I needed to gain more knowledge of what all of this meant.

I finally made a chart on my Instagram page if you want to understand it better.

Anyway, I quickly learned that living at the beach in Florida meant that many of these local families were, one, very territorial and hesitant of all the outsiders moving here in droves, and two, many had called this home for generations.

Their parents grew up in the area, passed on their house, and helped out a ton. I remember being in the school pick-up line, and half of it was filled with at least one grandparent picking up a student.

By the time we reached Florida, I had just enough time to register the kids for school, yet the after-school care program had opened in January and was already full.

Which, for anyone reading this that, has any power over these things. For sweet love, could we please save some slots for single moms and military families in these after-school programs? I believe this has to be addressed at the county level.

I realize this could affect funding up front, but priority has to be set aside for families that really need it and cannot always control the variables months in advance.

It is also not an option to make families rely on the CDC on base as an alternative. Every single base we were at never had availability right away, and if you decided to throw your name in and pray, there would be a significantly long wait list that took months to get into.

This is another problem that needs to be addressed on the federal level. Families on bases desperately need help, and there are not enough centers for the families in need.

But back to first grade. Olivia had a new teacher who was new to the area. They were also an active-duty family but with a different branch. Her husband was on shore duty, and just like our trend, she had just had a baby, so her little growing family was a big focus.

The biggest challenge came when Olivia came home one day and said a boy at her table told her he hated his mom. He would go into her room in the middle of the night, cut her up into little pieces, and throw her in the trash.

I immediately asked her teacher if she knew what he was saying. I told Olivia that some kids may not have a solid home life and to try and be as kind as possible to him because she may be the only light he has throughout the day.

However, that quickly backfired. When Olivia didn't give this boy all her attention, especially at recess, he would get angry, and then the bullying began. He punched her in the mouth and knocked her tooth loose, slapped her on the inside of her thigh, and pushed her from behind while walking in a line back to the classroom.

As a mom, I had enough. The school was not doing nearly enough to protect these kids, and the administration handled the situation extremely poorly.

I requested a meeting with the parents. That was denied.

I requested a meeting with the principal, but she didn't attend. Instead, she sent the assistant, who had zero idea what was going on and came with a blank notebook.

I finally had to go to the police station to see if charges could be filed, which they couldn't because the kid was a minor. Thankfully, the officer who walked in the door was a former county school police officer who said he had many cases like this in the past and that the only way to solve it was to take it as high as possible and not stop until you got an answer.

So, that's what I did.

I quickly began looking at getting Olivia out. I was desperate. I filled out forms for charter schools that were already full and running on a long list of other families trying to get in.

I tried school choice and drove all the way downtown to figure out what schools had openings.

This is great for the states that offer school choice, but here is the catch twenty-two. The school you want to get into must have an opening.

Just because you want your kid to go there doesn't mean you will get in. Unfortunately, the other schools at the beach that were available didn't have as good ratings, and the other one in Ponte Vedra was in a different county and a good thirty-minute drive every morning once you made it through the stop lights down A1A and the morning commute traffic.

When I toured this school, the lady at the front was not happy that we would be a potential transfer, and I had no desire to deal with a grumpy office staff again.

The last option was private school, which turned out to be $15,000 a year for one kid, and there were currently zero openings available.

Sadly, it was not the first time I had heard of families leaving this public magnet school and none of them were the locals that had grown up here all their life and had the connections.

It was their kids, however, who were teasing her about her shoes and teeth.

She began to hate school and the tears. Oh, the tears. It was constant.

So, we stayed. We stayed because we were stuck, and it was nearing the end of the year. The boy who had been such an issue was finally gone.

Thank God. That was an answer to prayer.

I'd like to think it was because I wrote a strongly worded email to the regional superintendent who went in to investigate the situation. Still, I think it was because my daughter was not the only victim of this boy.

We also stayed because I had known a teacher at the school before we moved. She was an amazing, single female my age with no kids yet. It was the first year where things were actually stable for her. She wasn't masked, and she didn't have a bully causing anxiety.

She did have the after-effects of all of this, and Olivia would constantly tell her teacher that her stomach hurt.

She was still dealing with that flight or fight, yet she had to push through.

I tried to volunteer as much as possible when it was an option and fit in with my work schedule.

Then there was Noah, who was now in Kindergarten and struggling with language arts. There was a discussion about putting him on an IEP, which I was very against.

What many teachers are not aware of is that this record of an IEP in any capacity stays with kids throughout their time in public school. If they ever want to compete for a government job, this will limit them, and special waivers have to be signed and approved.

I went to his teachers with this information, and they were unaware.

I couldn't figure out if Noah was genuinely struggling because there were two teachers and thirty students or if Noah was one of the youngest boys in his class and needed more time.

I kept hearing that boys mature slower, and then the question I was given became, "Do you want him to graduate high school at seventeen?"

To be continued…