Beginning of Top Ten Reasons for Home Schooling (#10)

Our family appreciates the public school that The Boy and The Girl have been going to. They have made sweet friends.  The teachers have been smart and professional and kind.  The principal and vice principal are savvy and tenderhearted. There are parents that volunteer their guts out.  There isn’t a scrap of hyperbole when I say that it was hard to walk away from the school.  We are hoping that next year when we start back there will be spots, but NYC is a crazy-mean beast when it comes to public school placements.  Knowing that there is a chance that the offspring will have to go to a new school when we get to the other side of this is the hardest part of the decision.  

I did speak to somebody at the Department of Education (DOE) in the Office of Enrollment and asked if my kids could return to their current school and the answer was optimistic, but non-committal.  When parents have asked me if that worries me I answer that I made the call to the DOE as a matter of course, I didn’t really expect to feel helped.  Guffaw.

As a parent active in the Parent Association for our school I have received emails, attended public hearings, and participated in meetings that have left me a trembling shell of a woman.  The NYC Department of Education's service to the community is about as valuable of a service as snake oil.  

Surely there are creative, hard-working, and ethical individuals associated with the DOE (if corporations can be people, surely the DOE… actually, no… I can’t even make a joke about it).  However, the overall DOE experience makes you want to scream: HUCKSTER at the top of your voice and strike out with your handbag swinging.

Number ten on the list is having a break from The Institution.