There IS a right choice for schooling your child.

When Lee and I were considering school options for Jocelyn for kindergarten next year, everything was on the table. Homeschooling. Christian private school. Secular private school. Traditional public schools. Magnet schools. Charter schools.

We sought to talk to parent friends of ours who had school-aged children, hoping to learn from their choices and experiences. What did we learn?

That there IS a right choice for us, but there ISN'T one single right choice that applies across the board to every family.

That's where this blog post title comes in. I do think there's a right choice for schooling your kid. I just don't think the right choice for my family and the right choice for your family have to be the same thing.

I had a great conversation in the church hallway with another mom last Sunday. We have made different choices for next year, but we were still able to encourage one another. It was nice.

And, sadly, I think sometimes that sort of thing can be rare.

I think as each of us are convinced of the right choice for our own families, we can erroneously project that right choice onto other families. We live in a culture that increasingly preaches "what's right for you isn't right for me." And while that relativism can be dangerous in many areas, I think we need a healthy dose of it when we enter the slippery territory of comparing parenting choices that aren't laid out in scripture.

Are all parents responsible for teaching the truth of Christ to their kids and discipling them in God's word? Yes.

Will that happen in the same ways, at the same times, and through the same means in every family? No.

And what choice have we made? Well, I wish I had an answer. We are participating in the public school choice process, and we know which school we would like. We also know that we really, really, really don't like the other options. If we get the school we'd like, then Jocelyn will probably start in public school in the fall. If we get our choices two through five, we don't feel comfortable sending her to those. In that case, we'll apply for a transfer - listing our number one school as well as another one that isn't an option for us right now - and then, if necessary, go through the appeal process. (We are planning to move this year, but our number one choice would be the same, no matter where we live, because of the Spanish language program it offers. In other areas, though, we could have applied for that school as a magnet program last month, whereas that wasn't an option in our area since it's on our proximity list instead.)

(Let me pause our regularly scheduled program to explain: Our oh-so-helpful unbalanced ridiculous ignorant school board put a plan in place that gives each family a list of schools in proximity to their local address, a system that under the guise of "neighborhood schools" ensures that kids in each neighborhood will likely be divided among many schools. They've done this while also failing to communicate details clearly so that only the most educated and informed parents understand the process. I could continue on that rant, but let's get back to the process... For kindergarteners, we each have to rank at least five schools in order of preference. Our address's list only includes five schools, though, so I have to rank all our options. The choice period opened yesterday, but it doesn't end until late February, so we won't know anything for a while. The magnet school selection period was in December and those families have been notified, but any school on your address's proximity list doesn't appear as a magnet option for your family, even if it is a magnet option for other addresses.)

Homeschooling? Honestly, that's where we thought we'd end up. But now? We're open to it, especially if Jocelyn gets placed in a school we don't like and if none of our other options (including a couple of charter school lotteries we're considering) work out, but it seems that God is leading us toward public schooling. We aren't closing the homeschooling door with absolute certainty, but due to my health and a few other reasons, that's not the direction we expect to go.

And private school? Setting aside financial concerns, we've decided that we're not comfortable sending our kids to a school in which kids with disabilities aren't welcome, and that's the reality for most of the private school options in our area and all of the ones we think would be a good fit otherwise for our family. We spend a lot of time and energy working to eliminate barriers to church involvement for families with special needs, and it seems incongruous to us to spend our time doing that while supporting (albeit, passively) similar barriers in a school setting, particularly in a Christian school setting. (I don't share this to say that it is wrong to send your child to private schools that exclude kids with disabilities, just that we've decided that it would be the wrong choice for our family.)

So, yep, I do think there's a right choice for your child. And I think that choice could change from year to year. Shoot, it could even differ from kid to kid within a family, though I hope that's not the case for ours because I like the idea of keeping them in the same schools if possible.

Whatever your family's choice may be, I hope we can each encourage one another.


PS - The book Chasing Elephants: Wrestling with the Gray Areas of Life by Brent Crowe is an exceptional one about biblically working through issues in which a universal right choice is unclear (and about figuring out what areas are truly gray areas vs. ones that do have a clear black and white in God's word).

PPS - My friend at New Every Morning wrote a post on a similar topic at the beginning of the last school year: Calling a Truce. I highly recommend it.