school decisions

Looks like we will be staying at Cook.

At the Cook Education Center there are several programs. There is the primary program with kids K-7th grade (ish), which is where Calvin is now.  There is a secondary program with kids 7-12th grade.  Urban Skills Center (USC) has kids ages 18-22. Also at the school is Children's Workshop with a different population of kids age 15-22. Each of these programs runs independent from each other, with limited interaction between the groups, but they do share a campus so they see each other, plus they may ride the bus together, if they are coming from the same district.

Calvin will move to the secondary program which will allow him to have more challenging academic classes but still have a lot of support, which he obviously needs.   The secondary program has kids 13-18 (once they reach graduation age they move next door to USC - Urban Skills Center, either for life skills, employment training, or to finish diploma work). There are 60 kids in the secondary program which will give Calvin lots of people to interact with and a big group to find some friends. Some of the kids in the secondary program Calvin already knows so he feels comfortable with the transition.  Calvin is happy to stay at Cook where he knows a lot of people, and also so he can continue with Karate. Right now he has a blue belt and is doing well in class.  He really likes Sensei Frank and what he is accomplishing in Karate class.

I am now know quite a bit about the non public schools in San Diego which is important for me to make the best decision. And would be super useful to anyone else looking for a non public school in town, if I ever run across anyone who needs that information. Slim chance, but you  never know!

In the next couple of years we may look at moving Calvin back to public school into one of the classes in the district. I don't know a lot about those classes yet. I tried to see the one that would be most appropriate but the district would not let me, saying they need to protect student privacy and not have parents come and look at the class unless we are considering a placement change right now.  While I understand the need to protect privacy I also think it's ridiculous to not allow me to look at the classroom because otherwise we will never know if Calvin could move back to public school.  That being said, the district is paying his tuition and if they want to continue to do so I suppose I should just be grateful that they are happy to do so, but it seems dumb to me that they'd want to block progress.