The Schoolyard Grapevine

Having a child in a foreign school system is quite an experience. And it's more than a bit scary, as you have no frame of reference from your own childhood, no way of knowing what's changed or what's new in the system since you were in school, what is expected of your child or, more importantly at the preschool level, of you as a parent. My almost-5-year-old is now in his second year of "educación infantil", which starts at age 3 and goes through age 5, the last year being equivalent to kindergarten in the States. The first important thing I discovered is that you only have one shot to get your child into the school you want, and if you don't take it at age 3 (say, if you were considering keeping him home until age 5 or 6, when education becomes compulsory) then you are almost certainly going to be stuck with whatever school happens to have an opening. And it's usually the least desirable school in your district.

Places in schools are awarded based on a complicated points system which changes every few years, so what applied 2 years ago when we filed our son's request may not apply when it comes time to repeat the process for our daughter (now on the verge of turning 1).I say this as a warning to anyone who might read this blog and assume that they can be guided by my experience. Points can be racked up for a number of things: the most points are awarded for having a sibling already at the school of your choice, and your current place of residence and place of work are two other biggies. You also get points for having an annual income under a certain level (based on tax returns from 2 years prior, which makes no sense), for being a single parent, for having a mentally or physically disabled person under your care (or perhaps this only applies to the child applying, I didn't read the fine print on this one), or if one of the parents is employed by the school in question. Quotas for each school are set by the state (by the way, all this rigmarole applies only to public or charter/concertado schools, I'm sure the criteria for private centers is completely different). Under this system, your child is pretty much a shoe-in if he/she has a sibling at your chosen school, and you have an advantage if you are a registered resident in the school district or its "area of influence" (the boundaries of these districts and areas tend to change each year). We were at a disadvantage as this was our first child to enter the school system (no points for siblings), we were still married and living together (I know, odd ducks, right?), and our income was above the cut-off line (though if they took our expenses into account we'd certainly have qualified). So all our hopes were pinned on the points for district residents. Of course a lot of other families had the same number of points, so after handing out the first places to the high scorers the rest of us were left waiting for the lottery. Yes, the lottery!

To solve this problem "fairly", every year the regional authorities come up with a random four-digit decimal which has to be multiplied by the total number of students with the same number of points who are vying for the remaining places. The decimal places are then removed from the resulting number and this plus 1 indicates which position on the alphabetical list is first. Confused? I was. But I eventually figured it out. I'll illustrate with an example. In a school with one room per year, only 25 kids can be admitted to each grade. Say there are 20 kids with 10 points each who applied to the same school, but there are only 15 spots left in the class after the ones with the highest points have already been given a place. The random number for the year's lottery is 0.4080. So 15 x 0.4080 = 6.12. Eliminate the decimal positions and we get 6. Add 1, we have 7. That means that on the list of kids who all have the same points, arranged in alphabetical order, whoever is 7th on the list is the first one to get a spot, and the 14 who come after him in alphabetical order are also in. And numbers 2-6 on the list are out of luck and will be assigned a place at another school in the district that can accommodate them. Here's where it gets nasty: parents have a window of opportunity in which they can challenge the results of this "raffle", and the most common way to do this is by alleging that some of the other contenders don't deserve the points they claim to have. This is often the case, as people have been known to use the addresses of relatives or friends living in the desired district in order to get residency points, and some couples have even filed for divorce to get the single-parent points (and then conveniently "make up" right before school starts). Parents will go to great lengths to get their children into the right school: some hire private detectives to spy on other parents suspected of playing dirty, and others go out and do the digging themselves. I had a first-hand confession of these activities from the mother of one of my son's classmates, whose older son was originally denied a place in the school. She proudly narrated her adventures as an amateur sleuth, digging through town hall records and trailing parents to see if they really lived where they said they lived, and she uncovered enough evidence of skullduggery to bump two kids off the list and get hers in. Legally, she was entirely within her rights, and yes, those cheating parents should be ashamed of their tricks, but I can't see myself playing Sherlock in the boonies of Andalusia and kicking other people's 3-year-olds to the curb. I made a mental note never to cross that particular mommy.

So, to make a long story short, our son got lucky on the wheel of fortune and was admitted to the school we had wanted, one of the town's two charter schools. So far we are happy with the school, though my foreign ignorance and my husband's typically male absent-mindedness has already supplied more than a few funny stories. I don't know if this is a small-town thing or if it's a Spain-wide (or worldwide?) phenomenon, but I have discovered that the mommy grapevine is absolutely vital. Why put something in writing when you know that all the mothers are going to share info at the gate at pick-up time? Sure, it saves paper and the drag of writing out 25 notes to parents, but I seem to be one of the few that never gets the message until it's too late. I seem to be one of the few working mothers in the group, and one of the even smaller group of mothers who don't go to pick up their children every day. As we live about 15 minutes away by car (another anomaly, most people live within walking distance) my husband is usually the chauffeur; my office is at home, whereas he works outside the home, so it makes more sense for him to do the driving whenever possible and save me the hassle of packing up baby and losing a precious hour of work time.

But of course, being a man, he rarely strikes up conversations with the huddled packs of chattering mothers, and so misses all the vital word-of-mouth notifications. Like the day we found a note in our son's backpack asking us to bring one meter of cola de ratón to school the next day. My husband is Spanish, born and bred, but not into crafts, and without any additional information we puzzled over the brief note, wondering why in the world a 3-year-old needed a mouse tail and where on earth we could get one without engaging in animal cruelty. After trolling the internet we discovered that cola de ratón (mouse tail) is a kind of string, which from the pictures online looked like the same kind of cord we used for our clothesline, so we sent along a meter of that. Of course it wasn't the right kind, and everyone had a good laugh at our expense. And on another occasion hubby miraculously opened his ears long enough to hear that all the kids had to come to school the next day wearing a hat. So we dug out our son's adorable baseball cap and sent him on his merry way, only to find the entire class sporting the typical flat-brimmed hat worn by boys and men during the April Fair (it was April, so if we had stopped to think we might have figured it out). Needless to say, the baseball cap quickly disappeared into my husband's briefcase, but not before several of the parents had had a good chuckle. And then there was the day that he showed up at the gate only to find it locked and the schoolyard entirely empty. Standing in the middle of the street with our son dressed in his uniform, backpack and all, he asked a passer-by if he knew why everything was closed up, and the man replied, "Don't you know it's a holiday? Today is the feast day of the town's patron saint!" Not being "locals" and living out in the burbs, we had entirely forgotten--of course, if I had been nattering with the mums the day before, I would have picked up on this. Thankfully our son isn't overly sensitive (more the active, rowdy type) and so far doesn't seem to care that his parents are clueless, but we are trying to tune in more often so that we don't end up making him the laughing-stock of our little town. But I'm sure there will be many more blunders; I just hope we can continue to laugh them off.