The Good Neighbor

For the third time in a year, we are facing a schooling decision for our kids, not a fun place to be. Maybe it would be fun if we had thousands of dollars lying around or we happened to live in a neighborhood with an abundance of high-achieving, reputable public schools. But when you live on a tight budget in a neighborhood where your assigned school was not so long ago the lowest performing school in a district with one of the worst reputations in the country, and when you missed the lottery because you didn't realize your affordable private-school tuition was going to nearly double for next year, choosing a school for your children is a daunting task, a lingering uncertainty that you wish would just go away. But it doesn't. Fall comes around and you have to be ready for it.

A year ago at this time, in Tulsa, we were debating whether to send our second-youngest daughter to kindergarten at the school where her siblings went--a high-performing local charter school--or at a highly sought after language-immersion school that she was accepted into through a lottery. After much anxiety and discussion and prayer, we chose the charter school, which, looking back, was the right choice, especially since we would have left the language-immersion school after only a semester.

When we moved to DC, I was frustrated that we had so few options for school entering mid-year. Charter schools and quality public schools were not accepting new students at that point. Our choice was between our neighborhood public school, private school, and homeschool. The neighborhood public school, which I mentioned earlier, had a rough past and consequently a bad reputation. But it has made vast improvements since partnering with a charter school a few years ago, doubling its test scores, although those scores are still lower than the district average. We visited and toured the school and met with the principal, and we felt okay about sending our kids there, at least giving it a try. But we also visited a nearby private Christian school, and we were surprised how affordable it was with the financial aid it offered us, so we decided we could send our kids there, even though we didn't know at that point exactly how our finances would shape up once Harvey started getting his paychecks.

We had to apply for financial aid again this spring for the 2013-2014 school year, and the results were not what we were hoping for. Because Harvey's salary is higher here than it was in Tulsa, and the financial aid organization now had his current pay stub, our financial aid decreased, making it extremely difficult if not impossible for us to afford to send our kids to Cornerstone next year. I was heartbroken. Our kids have done amazingly well at this school, and they've made friends and adjusted easily to the new school environment. After moving them from Tulsa to DC, from Deborah Brown Community School to Cornerstone, we hated to have to move them again.

Once again we considered our options, which seemed to be very limited: 1. the neighborhood school or 2. homeschool. From everything I could see online, we had little to no chance of getting into a charter school or transferring to a quality public school since we missed the lotteries in March. We began getting more information on the neighborhood school and we attended a PTA meeting; we also began researching homeschool programs and curricula and talking to our friends who homeschool. And of course, we prayed. I prayed that if God wanted our kids at Cornerstone, he would somehow provide for us financially so we could make it work. I prayed that if he wanted them somewhere else, he would give us wisdom and direction and open doors for us. 

Sunday afternoon our kids were playing out in our backyard, and Harvey was outside with them. He began chatting with our neighbor who lives behind us, whom we hadn't met before. He mentioned the situation with our kids and school, and she began to tell him about the good schools she knew of in Capitol Hill between where we live and Harvey's office. She grew up in Capitol Hill, and she and her children went to some of those schools. Harvey came and got me and asked me to go meet her, and when I did, she offered to drive me around and show me those schools sometime (also to take me to the nearby Costco with her). I told her I would get my number to her soon.

The next evening, she came to our door and asked if I'd like to go on Wednesday. I agreed, so we planned it, and Wednesday morning I headed out with Dorothy toward the Hill. I had thought she would just drive me by and show me where the schools were, but that wasn't her plan. She took me in the schools, introduced me to the people she knew there (and some she didn't know), and explained our situation. These were some of the schools I had heard great things about and researched online, which (based on that research) I believed we had no chance of getting into, and I certainly wouldn't have waltzed right in on my own and introduced myself and expected to get anywhere. But with Dorothy's gentle goading, I spoke to principals and sat down with administrative assistants and got our kids' names on those lists. And what do you know, at one of the schools, Benjamin was only number 19 on the second-grade wait list. According to the assistant who put their names in the computer, with that number, he was likely to get in, and if he got in, the other two would move up their lists because of sibling preference. In her words, "I wouldn't worry about it," they would make it.

Wow. I was shocked and elated. Hope! Hope for a good nearby public school for my kids. And it was due to my good neighbor, Dorothy, who took me under her wing and, though barely knowing me, pushed me out of my comfort zone to make something happen.

We will see what happens. But I truly believe that God used Dorothy to answer my prayers about school thus far and calm my spirit. And the very same day we visited those schools, something else came up that could be a possibility of helping us send our kids back to Cornerstone. His hand and his grace are so clear to me in this issue of school right now, and I am humbled and grateful. My family, my kids, are in his hands. He just chose to work through an unexpected friend--someone I never even knew until five days ago--to remind me of that.