About a year before his application was due, I began to obsess.  It all started with a conversation with my assistant principal.  It went something like this:

Me: So, Cake can come to this school for Pre-K, right?  The principal can give him a variance, right?
Her: Actually, they've changed the whole application process.  It is now centralized and the principal has no input into Pre-K admissions.  Probably not for Pre-K.

That's how it went down.  I started to stray from my loyalty to my school.  If she can't guarantee me a spot, I'm going to try to get him into one of those great lottery schools that will be a royal pain in the bum to get him to every day.  Yeah.  That'll show them.

I started going to open houses for lottery schools.  One, which had a lovely program and philosophy, amazing seasoned teachers and many teachers in each room had a total of five, count them FIVE seats open for next year.  Siblings had priority.  Apparently there were a lot of siblings.  Then they dropped this bomb: even if your child gets into the lottery for Pre-K, he or she must enter the lottery again to continue at the school in kindergarten.  Who wins the lottery twice?  Exactly.

All of this hubbub was stressing me out.  I started asking complete strangers where they were applying to send their child next year.  And why [me clutching complete stranger's shirt] WHY did PS blah blah  offer almost 90 seats last year and this year they only have 30 something?  WHY IS MY ZONED SCHOOL ONE OF TWO IN THE WHOLE DISTRICT THAT ONLY OFFERS HALF-DAY PROGRAMS?  At this point the stranger would run away, flagging down a cop.

Eventually, I asked my union representative why at my school they only offer one full-day program and many more half-day programs.  We can't afford to pay a nanny for the other half of the work day.  It would be much more affordable to keep him in daycare another year.  She sure brought me back to earth.  She said that the school had made a conscious decision to expose as many English Language Learners to Pre-K as they could.  Each full-day program cuts the number of classes in half.  "Well, does two hours a day really make that much of a difference?"  "Yes,"  she said,  "it does."  That's when the educator in me came back to the surface.  Of course.  Pre-K doesn't really exist simply to ease my childcare burden, nor to introduce my son to the joys of going to a real school rather than daycare.  Those half-day classes are in my best interest as a teacher.  I want as many kids as prepared and school-savvy as they can be before they stand in the door of my second-grade classroom.  Sigh. 

The centralized application allows you to choose up to twelve schools.  I chose eight.  Basically, the-school-in-which-I-teach's one full-day program [long shot] and seven other schools we can get him to at least in one direction, all set in a neighborhood in Brooklyn which probably has three times as many three-year-olds as it does Pre-K seats.  I put those lottery schools on the bottom of the list.  I don't know if I'll bother with them if it would only be for one year, though.  When I clicked send on my internet application, I had the same sinking feeling I had when I sent off my graduate school applications: this is not going to end well.

The Department of Education is supposed to send out its acceptance emails the week of the eighteenth.  The last day of that week is tomorrow.  Hopefully this will be the last day of our not knowing where my son will go to school next year.  In the meantime, I'll try not to be one of those entitled, obsessive parents who often rubs me the wrong way.  I'll try to be more like the unknowing non-parent on the sidelines, chuckling softly at the loony bird.