Moving from India to the US with a Kindergartener in tow

What kind of peer group do you want your child to have?

I have always believed that a child’s development is mostly influenced by parents and other peers of the child. A school provides the systemic infrastructure to navigate through this development process within socially accepted norms. Teachers play the important role of applying mechanisms that have empirically had varying degrees of success. In this whole equation, educational syllabus, school facilities, and academic rigor, while important, sometimes get a much higher weightage than they deserve. Peer group still remains the most important variable of the equation. Ultimately, a school plays the biggest role in determining this peer group, that is, the kind of people that will surround your child.

While we were in India, we chose to send our son to Saint Mary’s School, a school with more than 150 years of heritage, rather than one of the new-age, international board school. Now I do not appreciate the rigidity of these traditional schools and the implicit religiosity in their method of instruction. But they do offer a hugely diverse peer group coming from all walks of life and socioeconomic strata rather than cocooning a child to interactions with the privileged few. This diverse peer group offers invaluable learning opportunities that cannot be simulated through any other means. On the other hand, I could always balance the aspect of religiosity by introducing my son to the concept of atheism on my own time.

Public school system in Mountain View, CA is quite good

While our son was three months into his Kindergarten academic year at Saint Mary’s, we moved back to the San Francisco bay area in the US. We got some basic information from the Internet about the public, charter and private school systems in the state of California. We used information from http://www.greatschools.org/ to get a list of schools along with ratings and reviews. The ratings are generally based on the annual results as well as parents’ reviews of the school. Following through my original belief of choosing diversity over privilege, we opted to leverage the public school system in California. The decision was also made simple by the fact that public school education in California is completely free. Private schools in this area cost anywhere from $1200 to upwards of $2000 per month. Despite this many of these private schools tend to have a long waiting list.

What is the process for enrolling a child at a public school?

I was already quite familiar with the SF Bay Area as I had lived here for over 5 years. So when I moved back, I signed a lease agreement at the exact same apartment complex where I used to live before. Each area here belongs to a school district and has a neighborhood school assigned to it. My apartment complex belongs to the Mountain View Whisman School District (MVWSD).

About 5 days after reaching the US (this was 2 days after I had signed the apartment lease and 1 day after I bought my car), I visited the MVWSD office for enrollment. MVWSD asked us for following documents:

1. Proof of age: We provided a copy of our son’s passport
2. Proof of immunizations and TB risk assessment or skin test performed by a healthcare provider within 12 months prior to school registration: We had a detailed record of our son’s immunizations and got a skin test performed here. Apparently El Camino Hospital in Mountain View also provides a free patch test once every week for those who are between insurance plans or do not have adequate insurance
3. Proof of residency — they need 3 documents from a list. We provided them with a copy of our lease agreement, a copy of our car’s temporary registration and my California State driver’s license (I had a valid license from my previous stay in California). MVWSD does not require any minimum duration of residence to qualify for enrollment.

As per the rules in California, students that are 5 on or before September 1st of the enrollment year are placed in Kindergarten. And students that are 6 on or before September 1 of the enrollment year are placed in First Grade. Students who miss the age guideline for Kindergarten placement by up to a max of 3 months are placed in Transitional Kindergarten (TK).

Our son was 4 years and 10 months old on September 1st of his enrollment year. So even though he had already completed formal schooling for almost 2.5 years in India, he was eligible for enrollment only in the TK program.

Last year, our neighborhood school did not offer the TK program, but 3 other schools in the MVWSD offered it. So we were asked to provide a prioritized list across these 3 schools. The Student Services Manager at the MVWSD informed us that there is an opening at our most preferred school but we will be formally notified a few days later.

About 3 days later, the Secretary of our preferred school called me to ask why our son is absent from school. After talking to her, I realized that the district office had notified the school about the enrollment but forgot to notify us about it. I assured her that our son will attend school regularly from the following day. Also, I understood from her that we just need to send a snack and water with him and do not need to pack any school supplies.

When Transitional Kindergarten was just not the right fit and acceleration to Kindergarten made sense.

Our son could already communicate in English and read 3 to 4 letter words before he started going to TK in the US. But he spoke English with an Indian accent. Also because everything in the US was so new to him, he would not initiate any conversations and would respond back in short sentences. His TK class teacher was very attentive towards him and made sure that he settled into the class.

After our son spent a few days in TK, we realized that the class content was new for his peers, but he was already familiar with all of it. So he developed a tendency of showing off. Also, his TK session was much shorter than his class sessions in India. In some ways, he was unlearning the discipline that he had already developed in India. So we were keen on having him go back to a peer group where he felt challenged and conformed more to the age profile of his peer group in India.

Upon inquiring, we learnt that we could accelerate our son to Kindergarten through a three step process. The first step was to make a formal request for assessment for acceleration to the principal of the school. The second step required the TK teacher to provide her assessment about the emotional and academic readiness for Kindergarten. The final step was a 1 hour long assessment by the Kindergarten teacher on topics that would have been covered in Kindergarten by the time our son would join the Kindergarten class.

We decided to give our son some more time in TK to become familiar and at-ease with his new surroundings in this new country. After he spent a month in TK, we emailed a request to his TK class teacher for initiating the acceleration process. She took about 2 weeks to assess him on various parameters during regular class sessions. Then she scheduled a meeting with us to discuss his emotional readiness. After our meeting she formally supported our son’s acceleration to Kindergarten. Soon after, the Kindergarten teacher scheduled an after-school time to test our son. We were allowed to sit in one corner of the classroom while our son sat with the teacher. She quizzed him on various topics such as his ability to recognize the alphabet, numbers, rhyming words, ability to read various words, etc. She ensured that our son had fun during the whole process and made it seem like a game rather than a test. After the assessment, she was extremely pleased with the overall performance and provided strong support for acceleration.

Finally, the principal called us in for a meeting. Apart from discussing our son’s positive performance, he highlighted the tactical impact of the promotion. Since there were no openings in Kindergarten at our neighborhood school, if we got our son accelerated, he would have to continue at this non-neighborhood school for Kindergarten. For his enrollment in 1st grade, the district would give him higher preference as compared to other intra-district transfers. But the neighborhood school would have many more openings for Kindergarten as it is the beginning of a whole new class of students. While openings for 1st grade would be dependent on an existing student leaving the school. We still opted to continue with the acceleration. Our son switched to Kindergarten at this TK school right after the winter break. He did well emotionally as well as academically in Kindergarten.

Transferring from a non-neighborhood school to a neighborhood school

Later, the risk associated with his transfer paid off too. He successfully secured a spot in 1st grade at our neighborhood school. Now he happily bikes to school everyday in the morning and is very pleased with his new school. He is likely the youngest kid in his class. We often hear from other parents that it is advisable to be the oldest in the class rather than being the youngest. However, in my opinion such thumb rules do not make any sense and you should not impose them on any child. Our son seems to be doing well in 1st grade despite being the youngest.

How quickly kids learn when they are young

By the way, it is amazing how quickly he completely lost his Indian accent during Kindergarten itself. He now often educates us on pronunciation of various words and letters. For example, I never knew about the contextual pronunciation of the word “of” until he told me about it. I actually did not believe him until I found this Youtube video that validated his claim. This shows how children are so moldable at this tender age. All they need is the right kind of peer group, appropriate level of challenge, lots of encouragement, love and attention.