Not that school... THAT school over there!

The move to Florida so far has been all gumdrops and rainbows... until it was time to get the kids into school. Lee County, Florida has this thing called 'school choice.' A brilliant idea (result of a lawsuit) where you can *pick* the school you want to go to; as opposed to going to the school that's closest to your house. You can probably imagine what happens... We move from Louisiana, we get a nice house in a nice neighborhood, near a nice school...and oops! That school across the street is full! OK, how about the nice school a few miles away... FULL!  OOKKKK, so the 10th school choice later there is an opening. It is 40 minutes away from our nice house, in the nice neighborhood, across the street from the nice school. It wasn't much of a "school choice" was it?

It's bad enough we had to move 1500 miles away in the middle of school year just to be in a school half way across town. We had to drive the boys there everyday, or the bus could come get them... at 5:15am. We had to fight the school system to get them closer.

After a couple of weeks, a spot opened up for our oldest, but not our kindergartner. After some convincing we talked the school district into letting us split up the kids to get them into a school closer to the house. Our third grader is now at the neighborhood school across the street, and an opening popped up at the school a few miles away for our 5 year old. Anything was better than the 40 minute drive, extra gas, time to get the kids back and forth to school.

Now if I can just get the kids in the same school together now...