Is School Choice Killing our Community?

Chatting with another mom the other day, we were discussing how hard the transition has been to middle school for her son. And a different mom recently shared that they were trying to transfer to a non-neighborhood school, to allow her daughter to be in the same school as many of her friends from pre-school. With so many options for 'school choice' - are we ruining our ability to get to know our neighbors?

Comparison time. In Germany, home-schooling is forbidden. It's possible to transfer from your zoned school to a different one, but you must have a good reason. It either needs to be based on the proximity to a parents' work, or be safer for your child to walk or cycle to without parental supervision. So, all kids go to school and most kids go to the schools for which they are zoned or one within walking distance. Some kids go to private schools, but this is pretty uncommon as well. Generally, kids get to know each other and grow up together. The same was true in India. I was always impressed by how tightly-knit the 'batchmates' of my parents' friends were, even years after they had all finished school and moved on to very different, far away places.

I'm seeing this flipped on its head over here. We see our neighbor kids leaving their house at the same time as we do, but no one goes to the same place. We don't have a foundation on which to base a friendship, except proximity to each other's homes... but everyone has their own friends from their own other activities. Which are constantly changing! With 12 weeks of summer break, and no such thing as all-day school, and a variety of after-school options... there's absolutely no way to consistently provide our kids with a single community. They are constantly facing change and adjustment.

And yes, some might argue this is a natural way of life and we should learn how to adjust to change. I disagree. Building deep friendships is hard, and gets harder as we age. But deep friendships can be more valuable in hard times than family bonds - these are people who we selected to spend our time with. And these types of friendships can grow stronger than family bonds when built over time, when kids are small.

It's simple: by providing socially stable environments for our kids, we are setting them up to succeed. It doesn't always have to be about the 'best school' with the 'best ratings'. It's frankly amazing what people can achieve with strong social networks - regardless of where they studied and what their grades were.