It's not Who you know, it's Who you ARE.

The kindergarten drama continues round here. While the spots are swirling among the various private schools, we continue our undaunted pursuit of the Korean Immersion Program at a well-regarded public school. SF boasts many language immersion programs, but this is the only Korean one. The others are Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, and Spanish. The kinder class has 20 seats, some of which were taken by siblings of the older kids (don't know how many). So we are vying for one of those few remaining seats. We didn't get one in Round 1, so we are submitting our name for the Waiting Pool and hoping for the best. Last year, 2 seats were made available to families in the waiting pool, so there is a slim chance. I realize now, however, that I may have made a crucial error by not emphasizing on our form that we have a Korean speaker in the home. Apparently this is a big factor, though nowhere on the form does it ask that.

The application form did ask us these questions:

1) What is the first language your children spoke: For our kids, that is English.

2) What is the primary language spoken in the home: You got it, English again. (If you don't count chaji, koondengi, and pangoo as "primary language.")

3) Please mark the box next to the racial group that your child most identifies with, ranking them 1, 2, 3, etc. Huh? I am supposed to rank them? My kids are Hapa. the Ha and the Pa are equally important and equally present. You can't possibly expect me to rank them. So I put an X in the Korean box and an X in the "White" box. I guess this wasn't good enough.

A little bit of history here: Up until 1946, on most public enrollment/application forms, "Jewish" was a racial group. One can argue the merits of that, if one wants to, and I don't, but it is a fact. So a person back then was categorized as either Caucasian, Negro, Oriental, Jewish, etc. I know these terms are antiquated, and in many instances offensive, but they are the terms used at the time. After WW II, Jewish was dropped as a racial category and Jews were supposed to say they are "White." Again, one could argue the merits of this, and I don't want to, at least not right now. So being asked to classify my kids as "white" and "Korean," and then being asked to prioritize these things was, to put it bluntly, fucked up. Oh, and they say that they are asking for the racial information for purely demographic reasons. It has no impact on school assignment. Then why ask me to prioritize it?

So now we are in the situation of having to strategize to get into the KIP program, or else have Booper do a year of pre-K, which I'm sure he would love, then do this all over again next year. I am really okay with "red-shirting" him for a number of reasons. But I am feeling pretty annoyed at how we have to go through these machinations to get our kid into public school. Despite our annoyance, the current plan is to have The Handyman, in all his Korean glory, go down to the Educational Placement Center and let them know that we have a Korean speaker in the home. This is supposed to be very desirable, as he could potentially help the kids with homework, etc. Can you believe that this is what it takes?

I spoke for a while with a mom who sent both of her kids through this immersion program, though they are not at all Korean. She loves the program and thinks it's "perfect" for us. I agree. It is perfect. We are committed to the culture and the language and would be very enthusiastic about the annual school trip to Korea and the Korean student exchange in 6th grade. She said a lot of folks ask for the Korean Immersion just to get into the school, then they drop it after a year or two and go into the general education strand of this highly regarding elementary school. Jerks.

Any other ideas out there on how to handle this? Is there some secret Korean handshake I can do with someone to grease the wheels a little bit?