Last Day of (Private) School

Yesterday was the last day of school for the kids, which I’m finding an oddly bittersweet affair.

The fact is, it wasn’t just the last day of school for the year, it was the last day of school at their current (now former) school.

It had not been our intent when we started having children to send them to private school, but there are no public pre-schools, so if you want your child in pre-school, they’re all pay-as-you-go.

Michelle was and is extraordinarily bright and when it came time to put her in pre-school, we decided to go with one of the very best private schools in the state, Rancho Solano. There’s a campus near us and while the tuition wasn’t cheap, we could afford it. We intended to put her in a highly-rated public traditional school when she went to kindergarten.

Although the curriculum runs a year ahead than a standard school, Michelle absolutely thrived there and has been essentially an A+ all the way. We simply had no desire to remove her when it came time to go to Kindergarten because both she and we loved the place.

Similarly, when it came time for James to go to pre-school, we started him there also. He’ll be going on to Kindergarten next year.

Unfortunately, the school has been raising tuition most every year and with the state budget crisis, we’ve been loosing income. Even with the tuition donations of some very nice people and scholarship assistance from the school, we simply could not afford to continue on – not if we wanted to keep making house payments.

And so, when I picked up the kids yesterday, I knew it was the end of one chapter in their lives and the beginning of a new one. I’m genuinely sorry that this had to happen and I feel like I’ve let them down. It is, after all, just their entire future I’m trying to lay the groundwork on and I’ve not succeeded in arranging the best possible situation.

It’s both funny and sad how one’s plans can be derailed by the capricious nature of external forces.