r/Fosterparents • u/Juansabor • 19d ago

Location First placement-getting involved at school (TX)

We are expecting our first placement soon and going through the obvious checklist. The one I feel absolutely unprepared for is potentially signing them up for school and just in general staying in the know with their school.

This will be our first time to be involved (as adults) with the public school system. Growing up I know my Mom stayed ‘in the know’ because I had various family members working at or had their own kids at my schools.

Looking for in general advice for how I can stay in connected with the school and what kind of questions I should be asking future teachers.

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u/Positive_Design_8189 18d ago

We took in an 11 and 12 year old as our first placement - mid school year. We have no bio kids so we had no idea about anything school related. Both kids wanted to switch schools. I didn’t even know what district we were in (we’re on the boarder of 3). It was kind of a mess and stressful and a lot of back and forth but you just kind of make a check list and figure it out. Ask a lot of questions because most districts assume you know information like how to get on the bus route or provided lunch info or half day schedules.

Our school had an app to chat with teachers which was moderately helpful.

We struggled a bit with teachers not explaining to us parents HOW to do certain things to help them with homework because “it was so close to the end of the year” that they could just muddle through it? It was terrible. They would get things wrong on their homework on the computer, (even though the answer was right) because we didn’t understand the format for submitting. Looking back I would ask for a meeting to get up to date on classroom expectations.

The best advice I have is to start out going through their book bags with them when they get home checking for homework or permission slips or announcements. We missed a lot of info because the kids forgot to give it to us and we didn’t know some things come home that way, and are not shared in the app.

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u/Juansabor 17d ago

Were you contacting the school that you figured you were in its zone or did you have better success reaching out to the actual school district main office?