Well, I looked at all the neighborhood kids doing their homework, reading and not playing at the park because they had to go home to study (in 1st grade, mind you), and Omar and I both looked at each other and said “Why??” Why bring homework into their life one year earlier. Why stop playing one year earlier? Why have one less year to just be a kid? Why go to college less mature by a year?

So, we waited. Max wasn’t bored in Pre-K for that “extra” year. Now, he is great in 1st grade. Socially, he is awesome. In math and sports he kicks butt…. but he isn’t the greatest reader yet. That completely surprised me. And he would have been REALLY hard if he was in 2nd grade this year.

That was our experience. Do with it what you will…

We did the intense school search when our girls were 4 and 2 and interviewed school after school. I was thinking I was going to have to drive 45 minutes one way to go to the Christian school that my husband attended. But shockingly, we ended up loving the public school that was 3 minutes away — we sat in on all the Kindergarten classes in several different schools, spending about 5-10 minutes in each class and even attended lunch with our kids observing at each school. Hands down we were most impressed with the teachers at the public school closest to our house. To our amazement, the Christian school was not as welcoming and the teachers were not as inspiring as what we had hoped thus making our decision an easy one. Looking back, we are still very happy with our school. We have been active in our PTA and attend school board meeting and sadly we have had to our share of battles to fight. It has forced us to take an active role in our community along with a small close circle of friends inside and outside the walls of our school to try to fix some of the problems with public education to make it even better!