It's the first day of the fall semester for Roma. Those who know her will agree with me when I say she is NOT a morning person, but today the excitement of the new semester got her out of bed at 6am with no complaints or requests for "five more minutes....".
She walked out of the door excited to reconnect with her friends and start classes, but the first week of each semester is anxiety provoking for me. Why? Because of the hoops we have to jump through thanks to her age.
Despite having a high school diploma and doing the tests for placement in English, reading, and math like all incoming students and being accepted as a student, the school has special procedures we have to follow until she is 15. Each semester I fill out a form called a K12 form prior to Roma getting a registration appointment (which means she gets the last ones scheduled). For kids still in high school or under age 18 (even with a diploma) the form is permission for them to concurrently enroll in classes their own school might not offer - like foreign languages, advanced math, etc. The form says we acknowledge she is among college students and they won't dumb down the material for her (no need!), she is expected to act like a college student (she better NOT be acting like most college students), and that we are responsible for her fees until she is 18 (Duh!).
Not a big deal, right? It's not actually the form that is the issue. It's the fact that they don't seem to keep it on file from semester to semester so each time it's a new form, handed to a new person in the registrar's office who never seems to know what to do with it. When Roma went to turn it in at the end of last semester the person working in the office told her it wasn't possible that she was a student there. (This was after already taking 2 semesters of classes and having a 3.8 GPA.) Roma thanked the person, walked outside and called me, and I immediately called the supervisor. He knew of Roma, got me her registration time, and gave me his direct line for future problems.
With step one accomplished, Roma signed up for classes over the summer (at the tail end of the process and all the GE classes were full) and now its the first day of school and there is another form-related hoop to jump through.
The second requirement of the K12 form is that Roma needs to take it to her instructors the first week of class and get their signature on it. Note that I said Roma needs to take it - she negotiates this part on her own and I've never met her teachers except for one that she did a show with. Roma is enrolled and fees are paid so she's not crashing the class - they are signing that they will accept her into the class and if they don't she has to go drop that class/section and find one that will sign, or get a tuition refund. We have to wait to buy books and pay things like lab fees until Roma is certain she is in the class. (sarcasm font on) And best of all, when the form is signed Roma gets to wait in the really long line with the people trying to add crashed classes to turn it back in (sarcasm font off).
Last year a teacher wouldn't let her take an online anthropology class because there was a chapter about human sexuality in primitive societies. I didn't have an issue with Roma learning the "Margaret Mead sexuality" theories in an Anthro class AND the class was online with no contact with others, but the teacher was uncomfortable teaching someone under 15 even in a distance learning environment.
So this is why the first week causes anxiety for me - it's unpredictable. For each class we have to hope to find a teacher who is 1) willing to allow Roma in the class, and 2) willing to trust our judgement that Roma can handle the subject matter. There are some classes she can't take until later due to liability insurance or height issues (ex, she is too short to use the machinery in the department Ross teaches in) and we all understand that those teachers won't sign and we're OK with that.
So what did Roma take instead of Anthro last year? Theatre history - where she read works that had possibly more disturbing content (Oedipus, Hamlet, etc) than the class that denied her, but in the theatre class, the instructor was comfortable with Roma being there.
In a way, the K12 form and the signatures are going to force Roma to take an extended educational journey and take classes in a more free-form way since it will be a crap shoot each semester to even get into the class. We are not able to lay out a predictable sequence of classes for her, or know when she will have the transfer credits completed. The good news is the Performing Arts department doesn't seem to have any issue with Roma in their classes so she is taking these courses up-front and will wait to take some of the "controversial" classes when she is closer to 15.
But now I wait - she will be home in a couple of hours and we'll see if she has the signatures from today's classes or not. Then tomorrow she gets to talk to a whole new set of teachers before we have a clear schedule for her and can buy the books and materials she needs.
Lucky us, if we make it smoothly through this K12 form there are only 6 more registration appointments before she turns 15 and no longer needs the signatures.
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