FTR: Alabama no longer has a full-tuition scholarship—it’s a solid discount ($28k/year), but it doesn’t cover all of tuition (a bit over $30k) and it doesn’t increase year-to-year the way the old one did. (Alabama-Huntsville still has a full-tuition one, though.)
(Alabama’s on my D23’s kinda-shortlist since it has the program she wants—music production—without requiring an audition for entry.)
Alabama could be on my son’s list as well. 
right; Alabama’ s aren’t full tuition; but he received full tuition and plus without doing anything: they have auto engineering and another scholarship (tutwieler) which just came without notice. And - actually same with TT and AZ; some extra beans were sent automatically. stacking. But DFBDFB - you are technically correct! 
Alabama still does have full tuition plus room and board and stipend for NMF.
Laughed tonight. Youngest child was talking about future plans with her grandma at dinner (grandma was talking about a family friends college major). This led my 8th grader to start looking at colleges so she can “claim her dream schools” and forbid older brother from going there before her.
Fall schedule released today for S23. Sounds like he has some decent teachers. Fingers crossed it brings a bit of light to this dark tunnel of covid!
S23’s school district pushed opening on 8/19 to 9/8. Initial start date was 8/19 with choice of online vs on campus being left up to the families; then they decided to start the school year online until 9/8; then they switched to the current plan of pushing school year to 9/8 going with whatever choice decided upon (each family had to submit our choice last month before 7/31, I think). With the 7-day positivity rate being 23.9% in Texas, not sure we will see campus next month as they originally intended. I think the goal is to get that rate down to under 5%. We shall see. Oh and S23 turns 16 on 9/8. lol
School started here today for my D23s…a week later than it was originally scheduled. It’s currently all remote. School day started at 7:30AM (which is 30 minutes later than the usual school start time, so the extra sleep was nice). Entire district (very large district here as schools are organized by county) had tech issues at 9:00AM. Nobody could get on for their second classes (I’m guessing this may be when elementary and middle schools starting getting on whereas at 7:30 it was only high schools).
We will see how the rest of the day goes. If there are multiple tech issues this week, I’m thinking it may push the school board towards reopening in person. They’re currently planning to phase back into in person in two weeks for those who have chosen 100% in person (only K-1, 6, and 9 would go back the first week, then more grades the following week, then all grades the week after that). But this plan to start back in two weeks has been one they said was tentative and could be pushed back. Given the numbers here, I was thinking it wouldn’t happen two weeks from now and would be pushed back with everyone staying remote for longer (we opted for 100% remote for both D23s so ours aren’t heading back in 2 weeks anyway).
Now I’m thinking if there are a lot of tech issues this week, it is going to push them towards opening - both to satisfy parents who have already been picketing the county school offices about being remote for the start of the year and also to de-densify the internet use! But balanced against that is the Paulding County situation which has been all over the news (crowded hallway, student suspended for posting the photo, student getting threats for posting the photo, school went to remote second week because of so many COVID cases showing up in the schools after the first week).
Our opening date has moved from August 25 to September 8. All classes will be on line for at least the 1st semester. The state’s positivity rate is 5.2 (according to Hopkin’s or 3.6 according to the State). School system is county wide and county rate is 2.99.
I’m not ready for kids to go back to physical school. I would like to see special needs kids return 1st and then K-2 slowly. I am guardedly hopeful twins will have some in person learning second semester.
Well, Twin 1 got his first job today…at McDonald’s!!! Big Brother S21 is already working at Whataburger…Twin 2 is feeling left out as the only one in the house not gainfully employed lol ?
Our open date was also pushed to 9/8 from 8/31. I’m glad because D23 still has to do her summer math work and start her science project! Summer school for for Economics & Personal Finance ended up taking a lot more time than expected but she got it all done at about 1am last Friday, before going to a week of sleepaway camp. I’ll go pick her up tomorrow and then we’re taking a 4-day trip to the mountains. When we’re back it’s time for math!
I’ve been dealing with schedule conflicts for both of the twins today! Our school district does 4x4 block scheduling with each semester only having 2. nine week grading periods: so that’s only 4 classes a semester (each class is 90 minutes long)…final exams are right before winter break…start january with 4 new classes. Some core classes and electives like band, athletics, AP Sciences etc span both semesters…so…
Because of this whole mess with Virtual vs In Person/Face to Face and staffing needs, Their counselor called me with these two nuggets today:
Twin 1: He had signed up for Spanish 1 & 2…Spring scheduling conflict for Spanish 2, the only period it’s available is when he has band (4th period)…only two options— pay $700 to take it outside of school through another partner district (!!!) or wait to take it fall of junior year…how the heck does it make sense to let a FULL YEAR go by between Spanish 1 & 2?! Not going to happen. Nor am I going to pay that much money for a class he should have for free. I called his band director and he said not to worry, there is a 95% chance he will level Twin 1 up to 2nd advanced band class which would free up his 4th period and change his schedule…counselor is on board with that so we’ll revisit it in December.
Twin 2: Was supposed to take AP Chem and AP world history, and the. PreAp (honor) Eng 2…this year they’re combining into a AP Humanities block, so that means AP Chem would have to be 4th period…and…Band!!! Gah! So Twin is leveling down to PreAp (Honors) Chem and now has an extra elective slot to fill in the Spring semester so he decided to take Business Information Mngmt…basically it’s a Microsoft Office Certification course…Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc. My eldest took it also and came out with Microsoft Certs in all 3…useful skills to have.
I haven’t heard a peep from my Senior’s counselor so I’m assuming all is well on that front lol.
@Momof3B what a puzzle to make it all work! Glad you seem to have found some solutions, though your Twin2 had to drop AP Chem.
Yea, he was a little bummed but he can always do AP Chem his senior year for his 4th year of science if he really likes it…Junior year will be Physics which he’ll want to do AP as well…he’s my science whiz so he’s really aiming for that “most rigorous” tick…but he’s also a History fiend so when came to choosing which AP to take this year AP World Hist won out lol.
Great solutions to the scheduling issues. My son is in choir and band so I totally get it.
No AP’s for my S23 yet as they too just don’t totally fit with his schedule and there really isn’t much offered at the lower grades. They do have what they called “accelerated” classes of which he did 1 last year and is doing 2 this year so hoping that translates okay. As in, theres English 10 and Accelerated English 10 so the school bumps him up where they can. He is also taking precalc this year as he was 2 years ahead in math with the district. He ended with mostly B’s after that covid semester so hoping the bit of face to face format they are starting with results in better grades.
Some schedule conflicts here too but have worked out a solution. D23 will take AP US through a virtual school and her school will let her have a study hall in an admin office during her open block so she can work on that or other classwork during that time. It was only offered at the same time as AP Spanish and PreCalc H and she didn’t want to drop any of them and she didn’t want to add another elective as she already had 3. They are doing 8 classes on an A/B block schedule which is brand new this year so I’m interested to see how it goes! First day is next Tuesday!
D23’s schedule dropped today in advance of classes beginning **Thursday/b—schedules were released at the beginning of the month, but then the district went fully online for at least the first quarter, and they withdrew the schedules so they could rework into a more block-like pattern, with 3 classes running at once rather than 6.
First quarter, she’s taking first aid, chemistry, and AP world history.
First aid will be just the quarter, because it’s a semester course, and the rest will resume for their second halves 3rd quarter. First aid is a half phys ed credit (she needs 1.5 PE credits to graduate, this’ll bring her to 1.0). Chemistry is usually an 11th grade course in this district, but—happily—she’s in a track where they basically skip 9th-grade general science, letting them take bio in 9th, chem in 10th, and physics in 11th. Finally, AP world frightens her (both because she felt like she wasn’t all that great in her 9th=grade history course, and also there’s that big heavy AP in front of the name), but her 9th-grade history teacher recommended her for it, and honestly I trust his judgment. (The district doesn’t do AP courses for 9th graders, so this’ll be her first one.)
This means that second quarter will be the first halves of honors English, precalc, and IB German. (Her school has both AP and IB, but her teacher prefers to teach the advanced classes as IB, not AP, whether students are using it for IB or AP purposes because it gives him more curricular freedom. I like that reasoning.) She’s already a little freaked out by that last one because last year was German III, not IV, but her teacher says she’s very strong verbally and he wants to force her to focus more on writing in the language, which German IV wouldn’t necessarily do for her.
And no idea what her third course will be third quarter, but she’s hoping for something that’ll be a good follow-on to her broadcast journalism course last year, since that’s semi-adjacent to what she hopes to do in college (audio production).
@dfbdfb I am wondering how my D is going to handle her APs. Like your D, mine didn’t have any in 9th grade, so this year will be her first (and I like it that way - I am glad that 9th grade she was able to just adjust to a new school and a high school workload without also adding AP).
She has AP World, like yours has, and luckily really likes the teacher so far (they started classes last Wed). She also has AP Chem - I’m a bit less confident about that one. The advanced track at her school has kids doing both Bio and Chem in 9th grade which pushes them to an AP Science in 10th. She could have chosen AP Bio or AP Chem. She did well in her classes last year, but she’s much more an English/social sciences kid. Fortunately, she has the same teacher for AP Chem that she had for Bio and for Chem last year and loves that teacher as well. Fingers crossed.
And then she also has AP Seminar. So 3 APs this year in addition some other tough classes - French IV, Accelerated Pre-Calculus, and pre-AP English. Her easiest class is Japanese I…both because it’s the first level of the language and because she’s taught herself a bit of Japanese already. That class started two weeks ago as it’s through a centralized virtual provider for Georgia, and she’s loving it so far.
My other D23 has two honors classes - she won’t have any APs in high school. She’s also decidedly less excited about her classes. The one D23 was glad to have something get started, I think, after these long months with not as much to do. The other D23 asked me on day 2 of school what the date was of the last day of school because she is already disliking it.
Good luck to your D for the start of classes on Thursday.
Another 19 parent hopping onto this board for the crazy journey with D23. Academically, both my girls are very similar but personalities are very different, so this will be a much different search with a child who is much more methodical in making choices. My oldest D goes to Tulane and D23 does not like New Orleans at all and being based in the South, she wants something with more seasons. Having what experience we do, she will probably go small LAC so we shall see where this journey takes us!
@1923girls, yeah, my D17 and D19 were kind of like that—D17 was SLAC (and qualitative social sciences) all the way, but D19 was into big schools (and engineering). It’s a radically different experience.
D23 and D25 will be a similar contrast—D23 wants big, warm, and arts-focused, while D25 already very clearly wants small, cold, and strong humanities.
So yeah, sometimes with D19 I felt that the experience with D17 was completely unhelpful—and I think I’m going to feel that way with D23 all over again.