Class Notes - the LAKC blog

We have a ton of empathy for parents in Los Angeles. We know how hard it is to navigate this school stuff and to figure out where to send your four-year-old to school next year. Our tremendous empathy for your exact situation is why we started this class. It is why we went to preschools all over town to present the class and rented out spaces so we could reach parents. We care that parents get the help they need during their kindergarten search and have been working for years to help them. 

Fun fact: I used to drive around with 20 folding chairs in the back of my minivan for weeks at a time because we needed them for some of our classes, as some places only had kid-sized chairs! 

 As you go through your school search process, you will go on school tours (via Zoom or otherwise) and meet school administrators, teachers and staff. You will read through volumes of information on the LAUSD website. You will make phone calls to...

When I tell my friends back in Minnesota, where I grew up, about The L.A. Kindergarten Class and our mission, they usually ask me some version of the question. “Wow,” they say, “is that really a thing?” And I usually say that well, it shouldn’t be – but here we are. Between neighborhood schools, magnets (with the complex points system), charters (a few kinds), and private schools, Los Angeles parents have a myriad of educational options for their kids. But they’ve also got no roadmap for how to navigate the system – and that’s why the moms and dads I know here in L.A. tend to understand better why The L.A. Kindergarten Class came to be.

Everyone knows that the “school question” weighs on SoCal parents. Our mission is to empower families by helping them understand the various pathways available to them and we are working to make that help more accessible than it ever has been before.

And here’s the thing: we do...

Monday Night, Labor Day 

The education landscape was hard enough to figure out pre-Covid. Since March we've been a little quiet as we have been watching things evolve. Parents of students who just started classes this fall were watching and waiting all summer to see how this would pan out. A lot of them made drastic changes to their school plans because of the pandemic including opting for homeschool, enrolling in multiple schools at once so they could "try out" the online learning models offered before really choosing a school, or skipping the kinder year altogether. 

We have seen a ton of movement since mid-August when classes started at a lot of the area schools. Several families we know are making a move right now and starting their kiddos off in brand new schools tomorrow morning, after being underwhelmed with the first few weeks of school where they had originally enrolled. 

A lot of typically sought-after programs throughout the city ended up having...