Why I really despise the school district we live in . . .

. . . for participating in killing the Princeton International Academy Charter School and its Mandarin-immersion program for the 2010 school year:

On Friday, Steve took Thea and Micah to the playground at Wicoff Elementary School to burn off some energy after he picked them up at their camp programs.  Also at the playground was a grandmother and her grandson, the grandmother did not speak English. She however did speak Mandarin.  Steve pushed Thea to talk with her, and the woman seemed impressed at Thea's Chinese - and Thea spoke to her about Micah's hearing aid, his surgeries among other things.

Thea has been in Mandarin-immersion since mid-2007 at Ying Hua.  If all was right in the universe and good always triumphed over evil, the Plainsboro Zoning Board of Appeals had some backbone, and the West Windsor-Plainsboro School District didn't have a $100,000/year salaried public relations hack (when it doesn't yet have full-day kindergarten), Thea would be starting in second grade at PIACS and her Mandarin-immersion education would go forward uninterrupted.

Instead, and despite PIACS being put on a one-year fast-track for opening in Fall 2010 by the NJ Department of Education, the Princeton Regional and WW-P school districts have decided that they want no further charter schools opening in their respective domains and put a significant effort forth to stop the process.  (For this year.)

PIACS is re-grouping to open in 2011, but its charter school application is for Kindergarten through second grade, so unless the application can be amended to include additional grades, Thea is still out of luck since she will be entering third grade in 2011.

And to add to Friday's warm-fuzzy tale of Thea and the Chinese grandmother, today when I picked her up at Ying Hua's, the Wu Laoshi (who has known and taught Thea in aftercare since her pre-Kindergarten days) told me that Thea was her assistant teacher today, helping the younger students learn to count.  (While we were talking in the car on the way to pick up Micah, Thea spoke proudly of how smart 'her' student was and how quickly the student was learning.)

All of this adds up to my blood pressure hitting the boiling point at the sabotaging of my child's education.

Thanks to the WW-P school district, the Plainsboro Zoning Board of Appeals and all those uninformed souls who chose to believe the misinformation campaign waged against PIACS.  If I could sue you or otherwise make your lives miserable, I would.