conuly

Because that's what you do in the 8th grade, you apply for high school!

Those of you not in NYC should know that these books are phone book sized. I meant to take a picture, but I kinda forgot. I'll see if I can get one up later this week, but if you're breathlessly interested you can read it online here.

Thus far, we've sat down and done first round elimination of schools using these criteria: Waaaaaay too long of a commute (seriously, Ana, you're not going to leap joyfully out of bed at 5am to go to this school, so don't pretend), not eligible (because you need to be a transfer student or an immigrant or something), and graduation/college rates lower than our zoned school. When we add in schools she just wasn't interested in attending, we managed to get the number of Manhattan schools down to a reasonable number for consideration.

But after a while, all these school descriptions start to sound the same, the same tediously anodyne verbiage and tiresome attempts to sound more erudite than the next school. By the time we were done with Manhattan (having swiftly eliminated the Bronx and Queens from consideration entirely) I was ready to murder the next person to use the word "challenging" with a straight face. The worst was those schools that use portfolios instead of grades. Some of them look like great schools, but omg, it's all "we use a challenging curriculum to challenge and encourage our students and help them develop joy and respect so they can challenge the challenges of the challenging future...."

You start to have a real appreciation for the few who boldly decide to just say what they do. "Our school requires three years of science and four of math. We have an extended day program and mandatory community service requirement." Boom, done. I relished those schools that were willing to sum themselves up in three short, succinct sentences.

(Also, bonus points to the school that decided to address their description to the student rather than the hapless parent leading their kid through the book. Normally I would've found it trite, but in a sea of "challenging curriculum" it really stood out as a breath of fresh air, and we automatically put it on the list for consideration.)

Monday we'll look through Brooklyn. I've ruthlessly pre-eliminated anything with a more than 90 minute commute, anything which requires more than one transfer, and anything on the L line because that's going to be closed for 18 months. And then we'll do Staten Island same day, because there aren't so many options. (Although, interestingly, we have more JROTC programs than any other borough, carefully split up so that each branch of the military seems to be represented. Well, that's Staten Island for you.)