Decisions - School Choice/Gifted/Magnet

In My Humble Opinion
1

Background - When we moved back to our “semi-native” Florida after many years away, we knew we’d be compromising a bit on education. The schools our kids attended in Ohio were very, very good. Well funded, great, motivated educators, nearby, etc. We saw this not just in the schools but also in the local kids who were products of the schools. We made the choice to move back near family, but we wanted to provide the best educational opportunities we could.

Florida has never had the best school systems. Rapid growth, multicultural assimilation, poor funding, etc. Top that off with recent settlements between area school boards and the NAACP to end integration-via-bus. In our preferred county, Pinellas, they did this by making the incredibly dim-witted decision to bus every, single child in the County. Seriously. Of course a few children have been killed when they had to cross busy streets or were left off at the wrong place, and school bus dropoffs and pickups have snarled traffic in the area, but that’s the price of progress. So we chose to move to Hillsborough county, which took a different tack: let the kids just go to the schools in their neighborhoods, or choose another school which they may attend.

Hillsborough has taken the further step of creating magnet schools, usually in areas where kids would otherwise prefer not to attend. The idea is make the school so great that people will want their kids to attend there, and in the process help build up the neighborhood.

Current situation: we bought a home in a nice neighborhood, a bit pricey, but the school is within a mile of our house. Our kids get on a bus one short block from our front door. All of the kids in our neighborhood ride that bus, and they make only one stop, in our neighboorhood. Actually, it’s two stops, since there are so many kids the bus has to make two trips. They do this so the kids won’t have to cross the large street nearby, but it’s certainly walkable. The school is pretty decent, not great, but it still gets an “A rating” from the Florida Department of Education (I’d give it a B-/C+ myself, but they have lower standards). It’s large, but not hugely overcrowded, with about 1200 children in grades K-5 and roughly 25 children per classroom.

My kids attend advanced classes. My daughter, 4th grade, has AGP Science and Math and my son, 2nd grade, has AGP Math. They don’t offer AGP science until 3rd grade and there is not enough funding to offer AGP for other areas like Language Arts (English) or Social Studies. Both kids really enjoy the AGP program and tolerate their “regular” classes. Sometimes the homework in their regular classes can be a bit mundane and busywork-like.

The Dilemna: recently we’ve gotten some literature sent to us with regards to Magnet School programs for the academically gifted. These would still be public schools, but have either an advanced academic focus, and/or a special curriculum. For example, at least one of the magnet schools has an animal science curriculum. My daughter believes, at this point in her life, that she wants to be a veterinarian. She loves animals and is very responsible with them. She would probably love to attend a school with an animal science curriculum. My son is most gifted in the language arts area, and is not at all challenged by his current curriculum in this regard. He’s a very voracious reader and supposedly reads at about a 7-10th grade level.

My concerns are:

  1. AFAIK, most of these schools are across town in the wrong direction from us. We didn’t settle in Pinellas County mainly because I didn’t want them on a bus for an hour each way every morning.

  2. I like having them both in the same school. The ideal magnet school for my daughter is not the ideal magnet school for my son. On the other hand, after next year my daughter will be in middle school and my son will still be in elementary. So they wouldn’t be in the same school again until High School.

  3. It’s disruptive to change schools all of the time. My daughter has attended school in Switzerland, Thailand, Ohio and now two different schools in Florida. She’s ten years old next week. It generally takes her a couple of months to get settled into a new school. My son is a bit more adaptable, so it’s not as big an issue with him.

In Your Opinion:

Have you had any experience, directly or indirectly with these sorts of issues? Have I overlooked something to be concerned with? Am I missing some potential positives?

Oh, and one last “kicker”: the note last night was for my son, not my daughter. I assume, at this point, that they both would be eligible for this, but this may not be the case. I’m not sure how she’d handle if her little brother was more “special” than she was, although she does like to brag about how her little brother is smarter than the oldest kids in school.

2

I attended a magnet high school from 1986-1990.

It was the best thing that could have happened. I had been in a private school from 4th through 8th grade, and I never really fit in. “You got an A on that paper? You’re such a nerd/teacher’s pet/etc.” Middle school sucked. Then I was accepted into the magnet school - then, it was a 2.5gpa minimum (now it’s a 3.0) to get in, 2.5 to stay in. So instead of being teased for getting an A, there was a friendly competition between us to see who got a higher grade. “You got a 94? Ha! I got a 96!”

In my opinion, the teachers were the creme de la creme of the area, I got to take Advanced Placement classes, and I was in an environment where I really blossomed academically and socially. Keeping a smart kid interested through challenging classes - and being in an encouraging environment - makes for a well-adjusted adult, in my opinion.

My sister and I did not attend the same high school - for which I was thankful, because I think it would have been no fun to have her compared to me and vice-versa. Having fairly separate social circles was, for us, a good thing. YMMV.

3

Thanks for the feedback… I hadn’t thought much about the teacher’s abilities and motivation.

At least for now this might be a bit different for them. They ALWAYS sit in the same seat on the bus. They walk around holding hands or with her arm around his shoulder. They play on the computer and both squeeze into the same small seat. They sleep together a lot, especially on cold nights, although she does have her own room for her personal “space”. When he got a free ice cream for perfect attendance he broke into his own money to buy an ice cream for her so she’d have one, too.

Not to say they never get on each other’s nerves, but they are very close. Of course this probably will change down the road, but for now it’s hard for me to imagine the two of them not together.

4

I don’t know about the animal science thing Shib. Until I was about 12 I wanted to be a zoologist, and then an archaeologist, and then a psychologist. It was only in my final year of secondary school I decided to be a doctor, and now I realise that it’s probably the only career I would actually be happy in. Obviously encourage her talents and interests, but if a school is too specialised it might not work to her advantage.

The most important thing is that your children are challenged and interested. I know from experience that if you can spend your life doing almost no work and still getting top marks you don’t have much incentive to work hard. Later on your kids will be faced with people who have got where they are by working incredibly hard, and for people who have always had things come easy academically, actually having to knuckle down can come as a shock.

The other thing you can think about is a programme like the Centre for Talented Youth http://www.jhu.edu/~gifted/ which you could do either as a residential summer programme or a year-long distance learning course in an area that appeals to them. That would allow you to supplement their schooling, without turning their lives upside down.

5

I attended magnet schools in Pinellas for middle and high schools. The hour-long bus ride wasn’t great, but I got used to it. I think its more important to keep the kids motivated and challenged, even if it means going to a school a little farther away. Looking back on it, I think one of the often overlooked benefits of the magnet programs are the group of peers your child will be with. I never got into trouble as a kid, and that is partially because I was hanging out with the non-troublemakers I met in my classes.
In my opinion, some of the middle school magnet teachers were much better than the regular class teachers. In high school, most of the AP and almost all of the IB teachers were what I would consider a “really good teacher.”

6

Cool, I dragged another Pinellas Doper from the shadows. May I ask where you went to school? (They didn’t have magnets when I attended school here… I went to high school at Pinellas Park)