Debate

Here's the debate. We love the city and we love living in the city. K keeps saying I want to live where we don't have to be in the car all the time. We loved our apartment building when we lived here from 2001-2004.

The city has 2 gifted only schools which are supposed to be awesome. One you have to apply for kindergarten and you have to live in Manhattan. C would qualify. I'm not sure he would score high enough on the test or do well with the interview but I could give him a shot. He would have a hard time b/c the cutoff is dec 31st to start Kindergarten at 4.5 and his bday is dec 29th. But the interview and testing would be right after he turned 4 so I'm not sure maturity wise he would do too well. I'd love to give him a shot but we have to live in Manhattan.

The other gifted school accepts at kindergarten and at the other grades by attrition. K could apply here. You have to live in the 5 boroughs to apply. I emailed the director, who knows if they will have space. There are a couple other gifted type schools she could apply to also.

All of these applications would be for fall 2008 so I still have to do something for fall 2007 so I need to live in a good school district so I have the option of doing that. Homeschooling is an option too.

Sounds OK right? Back to the city... we cannot afford our apartment building anymore. The rents in the city have gone up about $1000/month since we left. So, we can't find anything to match all the criteria - mainly a good school district and some space with more than 1 bathroom. And if I homeschool, I'll need a little bit of space. We are looking at 2 bedrooms now or 1 bedrooms with a dining room converted to a 2nd bedroom if we want a doorman. I'm not sure we can live like that and I'm not sure I want to do that. We have to sell our car to move in the city and I'd like to explore the area more, there's so much to see educationally for the kids but that's hard to do when you have to rent a car every time. I think we would just do it once a month or once every two months. We many be at a different time in our lives now but I hate not giving the kids a chance at these schools.

The other reality is that even if I were to get in both these schools, I would have kids in 2 different schools and they are on opposite sides of Central Park which is actually a big deal. It takes a while to get across because you have to walk or go by bus so it'll take 15-20 minutes. I'm not sure I want them in different schools. I'm not sure we'll even be able to get them to school on time every day.

I'm in the circle of debate...