School Choice

Hard to believe, but Lydia is going to be in kindergarten this fall. She is super excited to be so close to going to school with "big kids." For about a year now, she's asked if she could please, please, please ride a bus to school. Buses from Holy Trinity in Lenexa don't run to our house, so until recently the answer was no. But, it looks like her wish will come true in Hong Kong!


In Hong Kong expatriates go to private schools rather than local public schools. Our tour guide explained that public school students are under a lot of pressure academically at a very young age because they will eventually compete for limited spaces at universities. She said curriculum in local schools is very standardized and rigid, with little "creative" learning. She said that while some of the public schools are great and competition is fierce to get in, we are lucky to have other options.


There are a lot of private schools in Hong Kong, but we limited our search to just a few. Hong Kong International School (HKIS) is where all of the children of other Hallmark expatriates have gone, so it quickly topped our list. It has an American style curriculum and classes are taught in English, but its students are from around the world.

The process is competitive to get in, so we got to write essays on things like how Lydia "will contribute to the HKIS community." That was hard - she's FOUR! I guess you could say we're warming up to college applications very, very early.

We visited the school and were impressed. However, the facility itself wasn't like any other elementary school we'd ever seen - it's a multi-story building with the playground on the roof! The "campus" is just for pre-K to 5th grade!

The facility was huge, but the class sizes were very reasonable - about 17 kids per class. We thought it looked like a fun place, especially the art room!





In April we'll find out if Lydia receives a conditional acceptance for the the fall semester. To get final acceptance, she has to go through an in-person screening process this summer. We are keeping our fingers crossed that she will be on her best behavior and won't try to be funny and say things like "the sky is green!" But, since riding a bus might be on the line, she'll probably be quite serious.


If HKIS doesn't work out, our Plan B is to send Lydia to a private kindergarten called The Woodland School. Unfortunately, Plan B would only work for one year, since Woodland only has pre-K and kindergarten programs.


We visited two of the Woodland Schools and liked them both, but applied to the non-Montessori style school. It also looks like a fun place to go to school - they celebrate every international holiday, so there's something exciting going on all the time. We have decided that regardless of how things work out with HKIS, Lydia will go to Woodland part-time this summer just to meet some other kids.






We feel like we have good options, which is a big relief. Now, we just have to wait and see what happens! (That's becoming a theme around our house...)