So.
While Char and I were flitting halfway around the world, getting acquainted with family I had not seen since infancy—and a side trip to visit my cousin's grave; his is a sad story I may someday share—and meeting Peter's family, Brad held down the fort here and stayed with the kids. And while he was at it, he overindulged them on a daily basis, claiming he was exercising his God-given rights as a Grandfather.
While we were gone, the last friend Rachel really had at school left for public school, and while Kevin likes his new teacher, the teasing and not-so-subtle threats continued from his former classmates. Rachel has just been miserable, and Kevin—while he says he can handle it and he's not worried or upset—shouldn't have to deal with any of this.
We promised the kids we'd take a much more serious look at their school situation when we returned, and we did. As is our right, even in this private school, we dropped in unannounced with the intent to wander around a bit and see what exactly is going on around the campus. What struck us both is that it's eerily quiet. A year ago the place was crawling with kids and the noise level was disturbing. Now, it seems like there are only half the numbers of students that there were. It wouldn't surprise me, given that tuition jumped 25% from last year to this year, to find out that enrollment halved.
Still, we didn't expect what we found. Rachel complained that she wasn't against making new friends, but there just weren't that many kids her age around. Given that she has her late grandfather's tendency towards hyperbole, we didn't think it was that bad, but in clearer perspective, it is that bad. There were enough seventh graders last year for three separate homerooms; this year there is one eighth grade homeroom, and it's not large. Most of Rachel's classmates are boys; she's as boy-crazy as the next 13 year old girl, but those aren't the kids she wants to hang around and gossip with.
The final straw, so to speak, came from Damien (yes, that Damien.) We decided to have lunch with the kids and he was there with his girlfriend, looking for Rachel. With Alex not there at lunch anymore, he's taken it upon himself to look after Rachel and to make sure she's not sitting alone all the time.
Trust me, I never thought I would be grateful to this kid for anything. But he has matured considerably in the last year, and is starting to think of others and considers how his impulses affect them before he acts. He struggles with it, but is trying hard (his father has related to TK) to stop being a boy and start being a man. I can appreciate that. While Char waited for Kevin, Damien pulled me aside and told me something Rachel never has.
She cries, nearly every day. He sees her in the morning before going to class, and she's usually teary-eyed as she heads to homeroom. Most of the time when he sees her at lunch, it looks like she's been crying. As far as he can tell—and he's been checking around—no one is picking on her or teasing her, she's just sad. His girlfriend says that from what she can tell talking to Rachel, she's just very lonely and every day feels like she's the new kid. Except, eventually the new kid makes friends, and three months into the school year she doesn't know anyone she feels like she can trust.
The older kids don't want to hang around the junior high kids. The younger kids are afraid of the eight graders. Rachel is floundering in a sea of boys just hitting puberty, and while she enjoys flirting with them, she doesn't see being friends with any of them.
Damien had a sense of why we were there, and just wanted me to know.
The thing is, Rachel has plenty of friends. Our house crawls with her friends after school and on weekends; it's not as if she lacks for someone in whom she can confide, and she texts like a maniac. All her friends are now enrolled in the public school, though, and something about being alone during the school day gnaws at her.
If it were a simple matter of the only thing wrong being that Rachel is lonely at school, we'd work harder at helping her find ways to cope. It's not a fatal situation; she has an abundance of friends and doesn't lack for contact with them. But we have become disenchanted with this school to a degree that makes it seem like more effort than it's worth to push her to suck it up and deal with it. And in the meantime, her grades were beginning to suffer.
Believe me, we went back and forth more than once, we spoke to the parents of many of her and Kevin's friends about changing to the public school and how happy they we were with the level of education their kids are getting, and across the board they seem satisfied. There is some teaching of the tests, but otherwise the teachers seem engaged and interested in what they're teaching the kids.
We gave them the final choice: stay put, or transfer to a new school. We realized that one might want to stay and another might want to transfer, and we were ready to deal with it, but both Kevin and Rachel jumped at it. So Friday morning we took them over to the school they would be attending and they were given a tour and assigned lockers, and after that we formally withdrew them from their current school.
Kevin will be there for the next two years; Rachel only until the end of this school year, but she didn't want to wait, and I can't blame her.
Alex, on the other hand, is sticking with it. If he transferred, it was unclear where he would be placed within the public school system, as a sophomore or a junior, and the way things are now he can apply to graduate at the semester break this year if he wants to. He has all his required classes and will be done with his electives, but he could easily stay put and graduate next year with the rest of his class if he wants.
I highly doubt that's what he wants.
Funny enough, as we were filling out the withdrawal paperwork, for the first time since Alex and Rachel started there, we were offered a discount on their tuition if we would keep them enrolled. There was no making the woman understand that money was not the issue (though I will be glad to not write that check this January) but the kids' long term happiness was.
The concept seemed foreign; kids' happiness? Should that even matter?
It does to me.
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