School

The school situation here in New Orleans is grim. It's really bad enough to be laughable...or rather it might be laughable if it weren't so unbelievably painful just to do the simplest things.

Take, for instance, my battle with home schooling Melissa. I had chosen to do so because schools as a rule did not accept incoming transfers (or even applications) so close to the end of the year. After countless hours of research and slogging my way through thousands of websites which claimed to help with home schooling, and some that offered help in the state of Louisiana, I realized that online was not going to be my best resource. I decided take to the phone and physical visits to the board of education office here in NOLA.
Phone calls to the Louisiana board of education resulted in a woman saying "You need to go visit the local board of education in your area."
A visit to the board of education for New Orleans yielded absolutely nothing in terms of help. I carefully explained our situation to the woman behind the desk at the office, that we had just moved from California to New Orleans and it being so late in the year schools would not accept a transfer, therefore I had to provide Melissa's schooling for her. I was looking for anything in the form of curriculum I could use to provide this education. The lady looked at me as though I was speaking out of context, or perhaps I was speaking penguin, and said "I'm sorry, I don't know what to tell you. You could try to see if there's any information online."
I finally felt a surge of hope when it occurred to me that I could just visit a local public school and request they share with me their curriculum. I could get a book list and outline or syllabus of some sort for the 8th grade classes. A visit to the public school went like this:
Me: "Yes, I'm trying to home school my daughter, and I'm having trouble getting my hands on any curriculum or book lists that I can use to guide me in age appropriate education. Is it possible I could just get copies of the syllabus for each class and the book used?"
Woman: "I'm sorry, ma'am, but we can't share the curriculum with you unless your daughter is attending this school."
Me: "OK! Can she go to this school?"
"No, I'm sorry but we aren't accepting new students."
I finally resorted to calling Melissa's school in California and begging them to share with me at least a book list, so I knew what texts would be grade appropriate. All this took me roughly 6 weeks to accomplish, plus another 2 weeks to get the texts and then another some bit of time to construct a curriculum from the books.

Here's the state of the schools here in New Orleans, more specifically the choices:

• Public schools: Violent and terribly unsafe, they typically turn out a 60% illiteracy rate .
• Charter schools: Very high quality education, safe environment, students must qualify to enter (must have at least 90th percentile in standardized tests, as well as greater than a 3.5 gpa
• Private schools: All manner of entrants are considered/accepted, however they run roughly $500 a month (some greater than 1k/mo).

If, by chance, you happen to be the parent of a well mannered/behaved child who shows great artistic potential, but gets B's and C's, you're SOL. That is, of course, unless you have plenty of money. But a single mom trying to take care of her kids on her own generally isn't in that sort of boat. That brings me to my tragic news.

Melissa won't be returning to me in August as planned, as there is no solution I can afford. Those of you who know me well know how hard this is for me, and those of you who don't know me so well...well this explains why I've been crying for two days.

I don't know if she'll forgive me.