Moving AGAIN?!?

Some of our friends have asked “Why in the world are you moving again?” To answer that question I’ll have to point to the wonderfully confusing, slightly dysfunctional, ever changing school system of Wake County. If you live here, you know exactly what I’m talking about. At least our school changes have been of our own making. I feel so bad for the poor parents that have taken their children to a different elementary school every year and they never even moved out of their house. Yes, my friends, that is the ever changing school boundaries. It can cross over you every year or you could be slated to go to a school 45 minutes away when there’s a school less than 2 miles from your house. Sad but true… Of course the people of Wake County have had it, so they elected almost an entirely new school board. But guess what… more changes are eminent.

How do we fit into this madness? Like most school districts in the country Wake County is suffering from a shortage of funds. Crazy economy coupled with a myriad of circumstances have forced schools to make hard decisions. At the end of the school year, we received word that the orchestra program at our middle school had been discontinued. We applied for a transfer to a school that is actually closer to our house that has one of the best middle school orchestras in the district. We thought this would be a no brainer… we thought wrong. We were given the opportunity to appeal, which we did. In the mean time, our school reinstated their orchestra program. What started out as a full time program was downsized to half time one year to now a limited part time program. In my opinion, this does not display that the school is interested in really keeping the program intact. It also gives a greater likelihood that we would lose yet another orchestra director because of the ever decreasing limited role to only very part time. The infamous school board gave us 2 minutes (no that is not a typo) to state our case. That’s 120 seconds to justify the logic of why a talented musician should have the opportunity to go to a school that has a full-fledged orchestra program. We did our best with more than 20 pages of back up documentation, but at the end of the day our appeal was denied. So being the adventures that we are, we decided to pack our bags in move 3.7 miles to the south to ensure we are in the school of choice boundaries.