Green and Birney

Do you know how overwhelming it is to tour one school?

There's all this stuff you have to process: the campus, the kids, the test scores, the amount of hours each one devotes to art or p.e. or music, the after-school programs.

Well today I made the crazy decision to tour two schools: Green and Alice Birney.

Green is a P.E. magnet very close to my house and even closer to my grandmother's. It's a wide, open campus with its own sports field and a philosophy to live healthy. The principal is super personable and embodies the school motto by getting up at 4 a.m. everyday to run before heading to campus.

Do you know why he has to get up at 4? Because the school day at Green begins at 7:30 a.m. That's not a deal-breaker for me, though. What did bother me was that the students are overwhelmingly male. It makes sense because there's tons of physical activity going on all the time and it really helps hyperactive kids focus.

I just don't see my teeny, tiny daughter flourishing there. Even though they do gymnastics and even though they give all kids swim lessons (so awesome). I think she'd get lost among the kids, who the principal described as competitive.

The actual kindergarten classroom was laid out in a way I haven't seen. There are four separate kinders, but they are all connected by a little maze of doors. You can walk into all four classes from inside the building. I'm not sure how I feel about it, I didn't like it at first, then I did and now I'm just sort of confused all over again.

Next was Alice Birney, an IB magnet in University Heights. It only became an IB (which is like the international equivalent of AP) last year so it's still in transition from being an under-performing urban school to a desirable magnet.

The kinder building is new and each class had a huge library. They also have several pretty cool vegetable gardens and I was impressed that they have a full-time counselor on staff.

But Matt, who came with me on this tour, pointed out that there must be a reason to keep a school counselor during such bad budget times. And there definitely was a big-city kind of feel there, which means big-city problems.

I didn't see Marina there and Matt, who it turns out has even higher standards than I do, didn't either.

Touring two places in one day did leave me with this: I believe all the schools I saw are truly trying their best. They've all got good test scores, dedicated teachers, an involved PTA. For me, these numbers and facts are just running together and it's becoming more about feeling, about where I can imagine Marina.