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My first grade daughter currently attends a charter school. It is a good school with high scores and is really hard to get into (300+ lottery/wait list). She is doing well here good grades, has friends, basically no problems. She is asking to switch to our neighborhood school. Her reasons seem very superficial to me; she wants to ride the bus, meet new friends, and go to the same school that her sister will go to. Her sister will go to the neighborhood school in 1 year. Her sister has special needs and the neighborhood school can address them better then the charter. My question is do I let her make this huge decision and let her switch schools even though she is doing so well where she is at? Also once we leave the charter school it would be practically impossible to get back in to it if she decides she hates the neighborhood school. I just don't know what to do.

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Question: What if my child wants to change schools?

My first grade daughter currently attends a charter school. It is a good school with high scores and is really hard to get into (300+ lottery/wait list). She is doing well here good grades, has friends, basically no problems. She is asking to switch to our neighborhood school. Her reasons seem very superficial to me; she wants to ride the bus, meet new friends, and go to the same school that her sister will go to. Her sister will go to the neighborhood school in 1 year. Her sister has special needs and the neighborhood school can address them better then the charter. My question is do I let her make this huge decision and let her switch schools even though she is doing so well where she is at? Also once we leave the charter school it would be practically impossible to get back in to it if she decides she hates the neighborhood school. I just don't know what to do.

Answers:

Advice from School Family and Our Experts

LiviaMcCoy writes:
Children this age are not ready to make decisions of this magnitude. You should do what you think is best for her and try to help her understand the reasons. Perhaps she could have a friend or two over from her school to start building strong friendships there. Since she is doing so well academically, she should begin to like it better there.