This post comes to us from one of our graduate moms. It’s an amazing story of advocacy and perseverance. For parents whose babies were born in one calendar year, but whose due dates were in another, it will be of particular interest … but we all can learn from how this family managed a challenging situation. As Vicki says, “I have always found comfort and strength in other parents’ stories, and perhaps I can give back with this story.” Thank you, Vicki – this is a wonderful gift to our parent community.
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We were recently successful in getting the Toronto District School Board to agree to let our premature daughter start school a year “late”. We held her back a year before starting JK. This is highly unusual in that the TDSB doesn’t typically allow parents to do this. Read on to find out how we came to our decision to do this and what we had to do to make it happen.
School entry is determined by age at the end of the calendar year. For example, even though kindergarten starts in September, as long as your child turns 4 by December 31st, he/she can start school in September. We were in the rare situation of having a baby born in November that wasn’t due until January 29th. Due to the early arrival, we now qualified to start school a year early. However, we believed Lily should go to school with her real peer group, the other kids born in 2008, as she should have been.
Unexpected Beginnings
With no advanced warning, Lily was born on November 6 at 28 weeks. She experienced the typical preemie highs and lows during her three month hospital stay but went home healthy. She continued to hit her milestones within acceptable time frames; however, the professionals that worked with her often commented on how ‘busy’ she was. We knew that prems have a higher risk of learning issues so this was always in the back of our minds. As a school teacher, I kept an eye on her development as she got closer to school age. We figured that if she seemed behind we would just have her repeat JK (junior kindergarten) to give her extra time in kindergarten to learn and get comfortable at school. At first we even joked that we were lucky to save money from getting out of daycare and into school early!
When we discussed this at the Follow-Up Clinic when Lily was 3 years old, a comment was made that made us re-think our plan: Putting her into an environment that she was not ready to be in could hurt her self-esteem. If she couldn’t keep up with her peers, and perform the same tasks, she would not benefit. The clinic even offered to write a letter of support if we decided to delay her start. Seeing how our plan could actually make matters worse, we decided we would instead DELAY Lily’s school start to give her the extra time to mature before facing the structure and demands of school. She was already in a daycare that we were happy with and that was helping her learn skills that would useful for school such as self-control, sharing, listening during carpet time, lining up, following rules.
To be clear, Lily doesn’t have any physical disabilities. She doesn’t have any pronounced intellectual or developmental issues, and always scores on the low end of average on her tests at follow-up. She is very busy and emotionally immature, but nothing that has yet warranted a diagnosis. She has also ended up being tall for her age. So, she presents as a typical kid with no issues, and certainly not appearing to need to be held up.
School Registration
We did not put Lily in school the year she turned 4 in November. The following year when it came time to register for school, the school looked at the year of birth and said she would be registered as an SK (even though she hadn’t come to school for JK). This is school board policy: registration by year of birth. In their eyes this is a very straight forward rule, not open to discussion. We thought this was a complete failure to see our child’s individual circumstances.
The long road to acceptance
This is where things got very complicated!
November 2011: We make a quick stop by the principal’s office on the way to our older son’s interview to ask what supporting documents would be required in order to register Lily a year later for JK. Registration takes place in February so we want to be ready for that. This decision to over-ride the policy will be at the principal’s discretion, but we aren’t expecting any problems. The principal informs us of the policy to register by birth date, and that if we are looking for an exception it will be HER decision what the final outcome will be. At this point, while I am standing there in shock, my very non-confrontational husband politely informs her that WE have already made the decision and that we are only in her office to ask what documents she wants us to provide. I suddenly feel very naive. We know our child best and we are backed up by a team of medical professionals specializing in prematurity, we aren’t asking permission because we don’t feel we need to. We assumed this was obvious and that the school would welcome our good judgement without issue. Not so.
January 2012: I send the following email to the principal on January 27:
I’m contacting you regarding JK registration for September 2012 for my daughter. My husband and I met with you briefly in the fall to ask what paperwork would be required in order to register her for JK due to her prematurity, despite her November 2007 birth date. We now have a letter from the Sunnybrook Hospital Neo-natal Follow-Up Clinic supporting our decision that we can share with you. We would be able to meet with you next week.
This email is never replied to or acknowledged. Registration is one week away.
February 2012: We have still not met with or spoken to the principal. Registration takes place at the beginning of the month at the school. We submit the school’s required paperwork and also include a 2-page letter from the NICU Follow-Up Clinic highlighting Lily’s profile and reasons in favour of a delayed start. The letter ends by inviting the principal to call the clinic for additional information. They also enclosed a research article about poorer academic performance in pre-term babies. We are lucky enough to have a very supportive daycare director too, who also writes a letter to say that Lily has always been placed according to her due date since she began full-time care at the age of 2. I happen to see the principal at registration and she says she will get back to us regarding Lily’s placement. I ask how long I should expect that to take. She asks us to give her a month.
March 2012: One month later we have received no answer: no call, no letter, no outreach. I send an email to the principal to which I receive no reply. I call the office and have to leave a voicemail message. Two days later I leave another voicemail and the principal calls back, but I miss the call. The next day I get through to her and we are told that the decision is no. The school is going to register her as an SK student for September. When I remind her of the research article provided by Sunnybrook about poorer academic outcomes in pre-term babies, she dismisses it as “only research” and says that only by observing my child in the classroom setting can she make a decision to change her placement. She says they are willing to re-assess her placement once she is in school and that they are willing to meet her needs right away. But we don’t trust that. They won’t even meet with us now or let us explain our rational; once she is in the school system it will get harder to change the decision and we will be outnumbered by school personnel. I politely tell her that we do not accept the decision and that we will be contacting the superintendent.
Perhaps the school system feels that a child at risk should be in school getting support. There are many services available to students through the school board. However, Lily was attending a daycare that provided similar experiences to a kindergarten program but with less children, more staff, and a less hurried environment. We felt that she was being well-prepared for school life (i.e., dealing with other children, lining up, taking turns, following rules and instructions, etc.) and at the same time being given the time to mature cognitively, emotionally, and socially.
March 2012: I call to make an appointment to meet with the superintendent and her secretary says that she will want to speak on the phone first so I leave my number. She calls back quickly. She repeats that the policy is to register by birth date. We feel this policy needs some flexibility. She will not meet with us until Lily is in school due to a “vacuum of information” (a lack of info because she hasn’t been to school yet). The evidence we have provided is dismissed, discrediting our concerns and knowledge. We wonder: how can supporting letters from the hospital that has known her since birth and the daycare that has known her for two years constitute a lack of information? To us it seems like a proven history of delayed placement.
The superintendent also says that any problems would be addressed by the school, so there is no need to worry. I point out that we are trying to avoid there being any problems by giving her the best possible start (this would even save them resources, and preserve our child’s self-esteem…). Basically, the board refuses to be pro-active and will only respond re-actively if there is a problem. We say that we want to set her up for success and that this policy seems to be setting her up for failure. But our main point has nothing to do with needing help at school. Our argument is simply that she go to school with her peer group, which are the kids born in 2008 (as she was due in 2008).
In the end the superintendent’s final reply is: “I’m not saying no, I’m saying no for right now”.
Both the superintendent and the principal allude to concerns about previous cases where parents have tried to have their child’s entry to school changed to make them the oldest child in the class, a practice called ‘red-shirting’ that was discussed in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers. Or parents of early January babies trying to get their child in to school a year early. Or private school parents whose kids are switching to the public board and they want them to skip up a grade. All these are based on external factors and a parental desire to bend the rules. We had to keep reminding the board that Lily’s date of birth was due to a spontaneous, unplanned birth.
We can’t believe that we still have not been invited to meet with anyone, especially seeing as the TDSB “Parent Concern Protocol” says: “In addressing parents’ concerns staff will strive to: (…) (b) Ensure that every parent with a concern has an adequate opportunity to express the concern fully.” In the end I tell the superintendent that we do not accept this decision and ask who would be the next person up the line to speak to. She says it’s the Chief Academic Officer.
The constant waiting and having to chase people down somehow starts to make me feel like maybe we are over-reacting, maybe this is silly, maybe we are being disruptive and demanding and arrogant. The worse part for me is that I am a primary teacher with the TDSB. I know the system and how things work, and in every conversation I have with school personnel I am spoken to as if I know nothing. It is very discouraging and insulting.
March 2012: Now we are contacting the Chief Academic Officer. I write an email in order to explain our situation, the steps taken so far, and what we are requesting. Here is an excerpt:
“We have already spoken briefly with both the principal and superintendent, but thus far we do not feel we have had an adequate opportunity to communicate the full scope of Lily’s situation and we respectfully request a chance to meet and discuss this with you.”
A week later I haven’t had a response and so I call the CAO’s office and the secretary says she will follow up with her and then get back to me. She calls at the end of the day to say that I will hear from the CAO the next day either by phone or by email.
I do indeed get an email early the next morning but it has unclear information in it and the CAO says she will need to do some further consultation and get back to me.
April 2012: Ten days after the CAO saying she would get back to me, I have to email her to ask if she has an update for me. She replies that she just had the JK placement confirmed. I immediately print the email as proof because it finally seems too good to really be true! I even follow up in June by calling the school’s secretary once I know class placements have been done and verify that she is on the class list as a JK.NOW we can believe it is true.
Epilogue:
Lily had a great first year in school. Her JK teacher told us that she fit in very well with her peers in terms of academics and behaviour and was “definitely a JK”. She was in a JK/SK combined class and so the teacher was able to compare her to both groups. All educational and medical people that we tell about our decision express their support for it and say it was a smart thing to do. As I write this, Lily is now in SK. We are still confident we made the right decision.
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So, looking back, I would have to admit that this was a risky idea because if we had ‘lost’ Lily would have missed her JK year in school. However, we weren’t purposely taking a risk or being sneaky. We really thought this would be an easy straight-forward process. I feel naive to have thought that. I certainly would not recommend “skipping” the JK year (and thereby only having one year of kindergarten, unless for example, your daycare provides a kindergarten readiness program).
I don’t know how this process would differ by going in to the school and seeking permission in advance to delay registration for a year. Also, I have heard of a principal in one school agreeing to delay a child’s start and then when the family ended up having to switch schools, the new principal did not uphold the decision. It’s very arbitrary. There are no guarantees, and you must proceed with caution!
If you have any further questions about this process, please feel free to contact me via email at: vickinicol[at]hotmail.com
Photo credit for main page image: Jimmy Emerson (under Creative Commons license).
