01 July 2012

Economic bilingualism?


Hudson is multicultural in so many ways!


In a casual playground interaction the other day at Matthews Beach, a mom told me her half-Mexican daughter would be attending Zoom preschool for the summer and that it was very difficult to get into.  I have heard other parents say similar things, and it looks like several programs run an average of $350/month for attending twice a week.  There are some, like La Escuelita that don't even post tuition rates on their website and I'm the kind of person who assumes that means it's too expensive for me, and even though it's a convenient location and it is clear they have a strong program, I probably will never even call them.
Currently I am our family's full-time income-earner, bringing home enough money to keep us going and to save a bit every month toward our imminent down payment on a townhouse.  Ben paints houses during the summer (anyone need painting?) and gives us enough extra cushion to allow for our uncontrollable extras like booze and seeing shows, attending flamenco workshops, etc.  We certainly do not have an extra $350 a month right now.  (We are even using state-offered health insurance for both Ben and Hudson, because adding even one of them to my program was prohibitively expensive.)  In short, bilingual preschool is not in our future unless Ben goes to work during the school year, in which case we'd also be needing to pay for child care when preschool is not in session...

The chain of money is dizzying, yet I'm dedicated to providing my child with bilingual experiences and education.  How do we go about this?

So far, I am simply counting my blessings that I am a fluent Spanish speaker and know of great resources other than preschool.  This makes me Hudson's sole exposure to Spanish so far, but at least I'm cheap.  Free Spanish exposure seven days a week is quite the bargain I think.  Perhaps by the time Hudson is school-aged we'll consider a two-parent income model so that we can afford a bilingual school.  Or I should call the school district today to get on a wait list for kindergarten at the John Stanford school, which I hear is also hard to get into...  My head is spinning.

At any rate, my dream is to travel to Spain (not to mention the rest of the Hispanic world) at least every two years, enroll my child in a bilingual school, and most importantly, just make some Spanish-speaking friends.  But my social ineptitude is another issue entirely.  Let's see what happens.

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