Empathy, Anyone? Anyone???
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 schools or to the school district. You will fill out forms online. You will try to make sense of all of the steps. And you may notice that NO ONE seems to care about how hard this is for you. No one is going to pull you aside, hold your hand or show you the way. No one is going to want to listen to how worried you are. The people you encounter only care about the school or the organization they represent. That's it, because that is their job.
All of these schools and organizations don't work together to make things easy for parents. Sometimes a few schools you are interested in will hold tours on the same days/times, making it impossible to get to both. The number of tours a school offers can also be so limited as to make it nearly impossible to attend and get the information you need. This fall with Covid there will be even fewer tours than normal, or in some cases, no tours at all for some public schools who won't get it together in time to do a virtual one.
We know this is a frustrating process for parents and we empathize. This process should not be so laborious and anxiety-inducing. We do not have the power to fix the system but we can help you make sense of it. We can help you get through this with a lot less aggravation. And we gladly hold your hand through parts of it, when you need it (at least virtually).
With Soooooo Much Empathy, Caden
