2009-07-26 Split Siblings

When school starts next month many families will send one of their children to one school and another child to another school. This happens to families all the time when children are split between various levels of school such as preschool, elementary, middle, and high school. The difference this fall in Indian Prairie District 204 is that just like a decade ago, some families will be sending students to two different high schools.

Mine is among these families this time. In my household, we have had one year where all school-age children were in one building. This fall will be our 11th year of having our kids split among two or more schools, and our fourth year of having kids in four different schools. I don’t think having these two kids in two different high schools will be significantly different than this past year when one was in Waubonsie Valley HS while the other attended Granger Middle School.

There have been complaints from parents regarding students who will attend Waubonsie while they will have a sibling still at Neuqua Valley HS. There are many more students who will attend Metea Valley HS while having siblings at WV. Since none of these students are in the same grade as their sibling, this means that they have attended different schools from each other for 2-6 years already.

I have read and heard the most incredible arguments about why it’s important for siblings to attend school together. One that often comes up is that this requires families to choose one child’s event over another. I am certain that anyone with more than one child routinely has to make choices when their children’s events occur at the same time. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that many families with only one child find they have conflicts as well.

Most of those with children attending two different high schools next fall will likely find that it does not cost their families substantial time or money or additional conflicts beyond what happened when the older was in high school and the younger in middle school.

Yes, things will be more difficult than originally anticipated for some and especially for those few families whose children would have been on the exact same sports team or club or in the same music group, because for one or two school years things would have been easier for them. However, most siblings will stand on their own and thrive being on that team or in that club or performance group without being known as so-and-so’s younger brother/sister.

For most split families curriculum nights at the two schools will be easier than dealing with two students’schedules in one evening would have been. The Fine Arts Festival will be split over two Saturdays rather than one long crazy day for many of us. My own high school students would have both performed in Waubonsie Valley’s Prism concert this one year but I don’t think either of them is heartbroken that this won’t happen, as they’ve never been in the same school concert before anyway.

My son would have ridden to and from school with his sister. Now he won’t. This is not a tragedy. He will get to and from school the same way he would have if he didn’t have a sister who drives.

Some will disagree, but I feel strongly that in most cases it would be a bad thing for the affected families to have had a choice about which school their children attend. At least from my own limited perspective of having been a teenager, being the parent of teenagers, and talking with other parents, I expect that given a choice many of the students would choose the school where most of their current friends will be attending next year. This would mean an agonizing choice of which friends to choose over which other friends, at very least causing some hurt feelings. Later anything that is not going well for the students at the school they chose, or looks like it would have been better at the other school, could be an anguishing time for them.

The district is doing what they can to help the families with siblings split between two high schools, similarly to how they have always tried to schedule events such that feeder schools do not have conflicts when possible.

At this point neither the number of students affected nor the reasons why grandfathering is not allowed are no longer relevant. The students know where they’re attending school this fall and which school they will graduate from. The teachers and administrators have planned for the upcoming school year. Courses have been scheduled and staffing has been done based on the numbers of students enrolled in courses.

We have all been through a lot these past few years and the best we can do now is look for the positives in the situations we have and make the best of it. Students will be welcomed into their high schools and other families are willing to lend a hand where needed for those of us who are split between schools.

I hope that all high school families help their students feel good about being a part of whatever high school they are attending this year, and that all district parents, regardless of where are from, will step forward and become a part of their school communities, whether or not they have changed schools and whether that is one school, or two or more.