Transfer THIS

Our daughter attended private elementary school grades one through three. With two mortgages to pay, we decided to put her in public school. It was then we realized that the home we had purchased three years back was not in the school district the real estate agent said it was. However, the actual district approved a transfer to the other. Transfers of this kind are granted only on a year-to-year basis.

For five consecutive years, the actual district approved our transfer requests. Our daughter is about to enter high school at the age of thirteen. This year’s request was denied.

This is a unique situation. Most transfers are requested as a result of the family moving mid-year from one district to another for employment reasons, and the parents would like the child to continue in the same district for the rest of the year. Not so with us. We have lived in the same house for 9 years. We are not asking for a change of any kind. We want nothing other than have our daughter not change horses mid-stream. The denial of the transfer amounts to a forced change, which we believe is not in our daughter’s best interests. All of her friends, her extra-curricular activities, and her education have been molded by the only public school district she has known. Yanking her away from all of this is just WRONG.

The reasons they have given for the denial: transfers are not guaranteed; they are a privilege, not a right – and the most recent: transfers from one level to another, e.g. middle school to high school – are a definite no-no. This is notwithstanding the fact that they approved the level-change transfer from elementary to middle school.

It is my opinion there is nothing to their side of the argument except greed. They want the money that one more student represents. Our daughter’s education or well-being is not, despite my many emails to them, anywhere on their radar.

So, we were forced to make a change. We now reside in a place that is in the preferred school district. No more yearly transfer requests, no more political mumbo-jumbo. Because education in Oregon is funded by state taxes, you would think that a parent would more of a say in how (or where) his or her money is used. The district we abandoned has conveniently forgotten who foots the bills in their neighborhood. They certainly don’t give a rat’s about what’s best for the children. It’s the old “it’s MY whistle and YOU can’t use it” attitude. And this coming from so-called “educators.”