We Finally Made a Decision About School This Fall

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Just hearing the word “school” these days is the only trigger most parents need to form a quick knot in their stomachs. We finally made the choice about what’s happening with our kids in September.

No choice is the right choice right now.

I can’t continue typing until I spell out those words. We are all stuck between a rock and a hard place and making the best choices we can right now for our families and our children. While they might not be the right choices for others, we’re all looking inwards and making these decisions based not on the opinions of others, but putting our families first.

We Finally Made a Decision About School This Fall

We made big decisions for both of the Cooper children this year because Blake is 4 and really, really (really, really!) ready for pre-school and Branden is 11 (soon to be 12 in September) and moving onto 7th grade and his first year in middle school.

Our school district delayed the start of school by 2 weeks and gave school-aged children two different options: they could either be 100% remote or 100% in-person. We did sit down with Branden and talk everything over. For us, and with Branden’s ADHD, online schooling was very difficult. It was a huge struggle for him. He did somehow manage to end the year with honor roll, but he also ended the quarter without turning in one (yup..not one!) science assignment. He ended up completing the whole quarter over a period of 5 exhausting days.

So, as you can imagine, we made the decision for him to go back to full time in person. He will wear a mask during specific times throughout the day and follow all the social distancing rules and regulations. The school has also announced that 20-30% of kids will be doing online school, so that will help a great deal with the social distancing.

For Blake, we really wanted her to go to pre-school and have had a program picked out for about a year that we wanted to enroll her in. While the preschool did get the go-ahead to open up at full capacity, they ended up sticking to only having 9 students per class. After being on the waiting list, we got the call yesterday that she got one of those coveted spots so she is super excited to go back to school in person, 4 days a week starting September 8th.

While they definitely weren’t easy decisions to make, we know in our guts that these are the right ones for both of our kids and the situations that will help them thrive. If things change in the fall, we will definitely roll with the punches and re-asses, but as of now, we’re happy with what the fall will bring and excited for the start of a new school year.