Kindergarten MADNESS

*sigh* Oh the things we do for our kids! As most of you know Mason just turned four in July, one thing I never thought I would be doing this early in his life was registering him for Kindergarten. Yes, you heard right. No, he is not some genius kid being allowed to go to school a year early. Prairie View Elementary begins Kindergarten registration for the next school year on October 1st at 8:00am. I'm sure you are asking yourself, why does that school begin Kindergarten registration so early? Right.

Well, the area that we live in is booming! There are new houses being built by the day! Just to give you an idea, the block we live on, we were the first to move in last September, since then there have been 7 more families move in, with 5 more houses under construction and all but one of those is sold (but I'm sure it won't be long before that last one is sold as well). Out of all 13 households, all but two are/will be occupied by younger couples either with little kids or hoping to some day start a family. Crazy right? And that's just on ONE block. Now imagine an entire area of the city, with blocks identical to ours, and just one elementary in that area for all those kids. That is what we have.

Prairie View has room for 80 Kindergartners and for the 2009-2010 school year, they had about 110 kids register for Kindergarten. So the other 30 or so kids have to be bussed to other elementary schools in the district and loose any where from 30-60 mins of school every day, due to being on the bus.

One awesome person in our ward (Alicia) told me that in order to get your child into the school you have to be one of the first 80 people in the doors on registration day, kids with older siblings already at the school are not grandfathered in, so it truly is a first come, first serve basis.

So yesterday morning, Alicia and I got up at 3:20am and went down to the school and waited in line. By the time we got there, there were already 25 people in line! We sat in the bitter cold until about 5:30am, when the janitor let us all inside, where we waited until 7:00 when we were given a number. Then we had until 3:30pm to get all our required documents and paperwork filled out and back to the school, if we didn't get it all in that day, we forfeited our spot. By 8:15am all 80 numbers were handed out.

All thee news stations came out to get a piece of the madness. I, proudly, did not get suckered into talking to the news, but there are a few clips of me sitting in line wrapped in my pink blanket. Watch the videos and see if you can spot me.

KHQ coverage

KREM coverage

KXLY coverage

So unless the school begins giving kids with older siblings an automatic buy into the school, I'll be back in front of the school at 3:30am (or earlier) on October 1, 2011 for Cooper.