Parental Gasconade

As many of you know, we have been trying to get Aidan enrolled into public school for quite some time. With his birthday being after September 1st, he has always been "too young" to attend public school. Because of this, we were forced to enroll him in Private Kindergarten last year. We were told by FISD this spring that he was still too young to attend 1st grade at public school, and he would have to go to Kindergarten. We asked if there was any way around this rule, and were told that they would offer a Kindergarten Assessment test to all the children that wanted to try to enter 1st grade early. They told every parent up front that the test would be very difficult, and was basically set up for the vast majority of the kids to fail. In fact, we were told that on average, only 5% of the children that took the test actually scored high enough to be allowed to attend 1st grade early.

Monday morning was the first day of the test. Those children that made a 90% or above on the initial test would be invited back the next day to take the second round of test. Of the 30+ students that took the test on Monday, 3 were invited back for the second round of test on Tuesday. Aidan was one of the students invited back, so Tuesday he took the second day's test. The test consisted of 40 math problems, and the reading and comprehension of two short books. When Aidan finished his exam, I was called to come pick him up, and the first thing he said to me was " man dad, that was a really hard test".

Aidan went on to tell me that he thought that he did "pretty good" and was happy to not have to take any more exams for a while. We of course told him how proud we were of him, and just making it to the second round of test was really quite an accomplishment.

The anticipation that was building over the last few days was almost unbearable for me and his mother. Aidan on the other hand was no worse for wear. Oh to be young and naive again. We finally got the call this morning that we had been waiting for, and when we were told the results, we were ecstatic. Aidan scored a 100 on his math test, and scored in the 90's on his reading test. HE DID IT.............he would be allowed early into the 1st. grade! Wooo Hooo!!!!! Wow, what a rush.

As I sit here and type this, pride is seeping no oozing out of every pore in my body. Aidan has done many wonderful things in his young life to make his mother and I absolutely beam with pride, but none of his other accomplishments have been quite as satisfying as the one that he earned today.

Aidan is quite a boy, and we are so very lucky to have such a wonderful son.

William