Choosing the Right School

by Katherine McBride

One of the most important decisions your family will make in the process of moving is where your child will go to school. Choosing the best school for your child depends upon an awareness of his educational needs and a clear idea of your family’s values about education. Before you begin investigating schools, be sure to determine your child’s needs, and what your family wants from school.

Your Child’s Needs

When you anticipate moving, arrange a visit with your child’s teacher to discuss his or her assessment of your son or daughter’s educational needs. This would be a good time to start a file containing your child’s education records and professional assessments. Such documentation can be valuable when addressing your individual student’s placement at a new school. It’s important that the teacher provide you with a clear idea of your child’s present academic level. This will indicate his mastery of skills when compared with other children of his own age. You’ll want a development and social assessment to let you know how your child manages the challenges of the classroom and interacts with classmates. Such information is comparative, like academic ability, and identifies your child’s abilities, especially those that aren’t easily identified through testing. Talk to any specialists or resource teachers who have worked with your child and may have an understanding of his special needs and abilities.

Family Values

What’s important to your family in the education of your child? Take the time to explore this question and make a list of ideals that are important to your family. Don’t be discouraged by all the negative press and funding shortages challenging our schools. Your ideals about what education can be are the school’s best hope for the future. When you know what your child needs and what’s important to your family, you’re ready to evaluate schools.

Investigate

To begin your school search, contact the local Office of Education or Superintendent of Schools where you will be moving. Ask for a list of schools and a map of the school districts within its jurisdiction. Since school districts vary in size from small one-room schools to hundreds of schools with thousands of students, your range of options will depend on where you will be living.

Check out the selection of schools within your local jurisdiction before considering private schools or transfers to other districts. The best way to check out each school is to call for an appointment to talk to an administrator and tour the facility. Be prepared with a list of questions that address the criteria you’ve selected to judge the schools you are considering. Such criteria might include safety; proximity to your home or work; transportation; class sizes; after-school programs or child care; facilities, materials, and maintenance; staff; curriculum; special programs.

Safety First

A safe school is the priority of parents everywhere. Unfortunately, like society at large, schools generally have become less safe for children. The two areas of growing concern are violence within the schools among students, and the potential for crime and violence from surrounding neighborhoods.  First, evaluate the neighborhood in which the prospective school is situated. An interview with your local law enforcement agency will give you accurate statistics about crime in the neighborhoods within its jurisdiction. This information may help you to narrow your selection of schools. When you tour each candidate school, observe playground interactions and ask about school rules, how they’re enforced, and about the incidence of violence among the children.  Find out what safety measures and policies are in place at the school. What are procedures for adults taking students out of school? Are playgrounds fenced and locked? Look for smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, and ask about practice drills to prepare children for an emergency. Talk to the school nurse if one is on staff to find out if immunization requirements are strictly enforced and how communicable illnesses and diseases are addressed. What are the policies on corporal punishment, and do you agree with them? Is safety education part of the school curriculum?

Close to Home or Work

Choosing a school that is close to home or work depends on your transportation, and after-school activities or childcare needs. Get the information you need about transportation, after school activities and childcare available through the school, and select on the basis of convenience, if all other factors in your decision are equal.

Transportation

Investigate your child’s transportation options including taking a school bus, riding in a car pool, having parents drive, or walking or biking to school. Your principle considerations are safety and convenience, with the weather in your region as an added factor.

Class Size

The ideal number of students per classroom is a hotly debated issue across the country. Schools save money by hiring fewer teachers when they maintain large classes. Some schools divide their grades or groups into large classes, but provide each teacher with one or more adults to aid in supervision, as nonprofessionals earning a lower wage and generally possessing less formal training. This increases the ratio of adults to children in the classroom and can minimize the disadvantages of large classes. Ask about adult to child ratios in the classrooms and on the playground.

After-School Programs and Child Care

The appeal of these offerings depends upon your family’s need for them. If your child could benefit from after school care or programs, consider these important criteria in your choice of a school.

Facilities, Materials, and Maintenance

When you tour your child’s prospective school, look at it as a health and safety inspector would. Ask to see the rest rooms because their maintenance will give you an indication of the cleanliness standards at the school. Look for a clean, well-lighted, ventilated, adequately heated and cooled facility. Is drinking water readily available? Where do the children eat, and are school lunches provided? If so, ask to see a current menu.  Are the playgrounds well equipped and safe and challenging structures or game areas? What kinds of learning equipment can the students access? Are computers available? Is the library well stocked with a varied selection of quality reading material? Look at textbooks for their condition and publish date. Older language textbooks are not as critical as obsolete science books. How are textbooks selected, and how often are they replaced?

Staff

Question the school administrator you interview about the school’s staff, its teachers, and other professionals as well as support staff. Ask about the number of teaching positions and the average tenure of the teachers to get an idea of staff turnover. Arrange to interview the teachers at your child’s grade level if the school looks promising. Does the administrator offer flexibility in their teaching positions, such as shared assignments? These arrangements can be an advantage for students and administrators because they get the benefits of the two qualified professionals for nearly the price of one. This kind of flexibility also can reduce stress on teachers, minimizing the risk of classroom “burnout.”

Curriculum

Ask questions about the school’s curriculum with your own child’s needs and abilities in mind. The administration should be able to provide you with a printed curriculum by grade level. Some districts address curriculum preferences by focusing an entire school’s curriculum in a particular area, such as the arts, science, traditional three R’s and alternative programs. Ask about specially focused schools within your new school district. Talk with your child’s prospective teacher to get a better idea of how the standard curriculum might be implemented.

Special Programs

You can address your child’s unique needs and abilities by asking about special programs offered by the district or within each school. Special education, gifted programs, art, science, and music classes, are all special programs offered by many schools and within most districts. Alternative programs are classes that offer an alternative to the traditional education curriculum. Such programs are usually parent initiated, and are the school district’s attempts to accommodate parent’s desire for attention to the special needs of their children.

When you’ve done your research and applied some thoughtful introspection, talked it over with your child and other family members, and checked with members of your new community, you’re ready to make an informed decision about which school is best for your child. You may not find the ideal school, but applying your ideals to the school you’ve chosen for your child is a way of supporting and maintaining excellence in education.