More school issues + sleep issues for my daughter!
At the beginning of the school year, due to insane policies from USD259 – Wichita Schools, not requiring masks in schools despite rising cases of the COVID-19 delta variant in the city, we elected to not send our daughter to her physical school, opting for an online school, in this case, USD259’s Education Imagine Academy. But after five weeks of waiting, we find out our application for our daughter to attend Imagine Academy was denied due to overwhelming demand for the school district’s online alternative, which we can only assume is related to the initial lack of mask mandate. Even with a significantly expanded class for 2021, there were still not enough places for all kids wanting a place in Imagine Academy.
But it gets worse, now we know our daughter cannot attend Imagine Academy, we called up her regular school, Gordon Parks Academy, which like so many schools in Wichita, is a magnet school, for which, your child has to be accepted, which she was. But, apparently, after 2 weeks of school, that offer is rescinded and handed to the next child in line. We were told by Gordon Parks staff that we should reapply for Gordon Parks, but also apply for her “neighborhood” school, which is nowhere near our neighborhood, it’s on the other side of the city, there are literally half a dozen middle schools closer.
I did apply again for Gordon Parks as instructed, which seemed to be the only option on the online enrollment system, I saw no option to select another school. The issue now is that I have a pending application for Gordon Parks, and I cannot apply for Hamilton middle school, while the application for Gordon Parks is still active. We don’t really want our daughter to go to Hamilton due to the distance from our home because our daughter has been diagnosed with Autism with severe anxiety, we don’t like the idea of being so far away, should she have an episode. This is why we chose Gordon Parks, as she already knew the school, as she attended there in elementary, and it’s walking distance from our home.
Moving onto the secondary issue, our daughter does not have any motivation to do anything during the day, only getting active when her friends are home from school, where she wants to play. I cannot keep her awake during the day, I literally drag her out of bed, stand her up, and she just moves to another room, lays down, and falls asleep again. She will literally sleep all day, which has a knock-on effect of meaning she is awake all night. Even when we get her back into a regular sleeping pattern, within a day, or sometimes two, she’ll sleep all night, then all day, waking up at 4—5pm, expecting to go out and play.
I’m at home, but I work a full-time job, which keeps me very busy, I don’t have time to keep track of what she is doing constantly. This sleeping issue has been an issue since school went remote, often falling asleep during school, so we have been dealing with this for close to 2 years now, and we cannot seem to break her of it, despite her being twelve years old in a few months. She always likes to pass the buck, blaming everyone and everything else, instead of taking responsibility for her own actions.
In an effort to break her of this behavior, I have stopped her from going out to play with her friends if she sleeps all day. Of course, she is now upset with me, because I turned her friends away when they came to our front door. This is where issues #1 and #2 are related, if we can get her back into physical school, hopefully, being around other kids will break her of this sleeping all day, to motivate her to be active, but we would like to not have her seven miles away, but at this point, I don’t see another option unless a magnet place opens up at Gordon Parks, which is unlikely as we have gone to the back of the list.
MINI RANT: I don’t understand why so many schools have become magnet schools, so many, that neighborhood schools are literally half a dozen or more miles away, with parents often having to drive, or have their children bussed to neighborhoods across the city, just to attend school. It defies logic, to have to drive past half a dozen other middle schools on the way to their neighborhood school!
UPDATE (SEP, 24 2021): RESOLUTION!
After 1½ hours on the phone to schools and USD259 administrative offices, we finally got our daughter into Gordon Parks, the school which we were told the offer to attend had been rescinded by school staff. It seems like most government entities, the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.
First, I called our neighborhood school, the closest none magnet school, Hamilton Middle School, asking about enrollment, who directed me to parentVUE, to complete enrollment, I explained that I could not do that as there is a pending application to Gordon Parks. The person at Hamilton told me to call Gordon Parks, and ask them to deny the application, so I am able to complete an application for Hamilton.
I called Gordon Parks, and I explain that I need to withdraw my application for our daughter to attend Gordon Parks. The person who deals with enrollment was not in the office, so the front office person suggested I call the magnet office, which I did not know existed until that moment.
Finally, I called the magnet office, explained the situation for the third time, requesting either denial or removal of our application for our daughter to attend Gordon Parks, so we could get our daughter enrolled in Hamilton. After explaining the whole sad story, the person at the magnet office said she would look into it and give me a callback. After 15 minutes, I get a callback, with good news, our daughter was not actually removed from Gordon Parks, and that I had to complete the application I had started, which I had already completed. It turns out that she was looking at the wrong screen in their system, once she realized that she was on the wrong screen, she saw the completed application and approved it.
While I am relieved to have resolved the situation, I am also pissed off that our daughter has had to suffer, missing six weeks of school, due to either a lack of training in the use of their computer systems or simple incompetence. Either way, this is totally unacceptable, USD259 has failed our daughter.
FINAL WORDS
The 2021/22 school year has been a clusterfuck from day one, from announcing there would be no mask mandate for staff and students days before the start of school, to reversing that decision one week later, but deferring enforcement for another week, to this sad situation getting our daughter into school. If the mask mandate was enforced from day one, we and many other parents would not have even applied for Imagine Academy, Wichita Schools online alternative, and had our kids in a physical school.