r/ChicagoParents

Info about Holden Elementary in Bridgeport

Hello. My family (me, wife, 5 y/o son) just went under contract on a house a little bit west of McGuane Park. We're zoned for Holden. From looking online it seems like a really nice school.

My son will be starting kindergarten. We are moving from Atlanta so we've never visited Holden to check it out and we have no experience with CPS elementary schools.

Is there anything we should know about Holden? Is there anything about starting kindergarten in general at a CPS elementary school that would be good to know before the first day of school?

Is Healy Elementary that much "better" than Holden? We just missed out on a house zoned for Healy but we're basically equidistant between the two schools so the "commute" would be the same. I suppose we'll find out if we like Holden during the school year but we aren't sure if we should be focused on trying to get him into Healy for 1st grade through the '27-'28 lottery.

Thanks for all the info. We're so excited to be moving to Chicago and Bridgeport in particular. It seems like a great neighborhood. We're very ready to leave Atlanta.

Hello, I am a PhD candidate at the University of Strathclyde where I am conducting research to further support parents, children and families affected by intergenerational trauma. Research has shown that in Scotland, 71% of adults have experienced one form of trauma. Despite this, it is unclear how these experiences affect the wider family system.

As such, I am conducting a study to explore how parent positive and negative experiences affect emotions and parenting, and in turn, affect their children. This research is important for the development of interventions that prevent trauma from being passed down from one generation to the next, as well as interventions that help families thrive.

I am looking for parents and caregivers of children aged 3 to 17 years to complete an
online questionnaire. The questionnaire will take approximately 10-15 minutes to complete and is completely anonymous. This means any answers given cannot be traced back to you.

Please be aware this questionnaire will ask some challenging questions, therefore, please only participate if you feel able to do so.

To access the questionnaire, please click on the link below.
If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me Miriam.Nichol@strath.ac.uk.

Thank you for your time!

https://hass.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV\_29aYXIqyE1KMWuq

Hi,

We are researching schools to prepare for the fall. Could someone help me understand why, even after controlling for poverty/SES, some schools seem to perform significantly better than others. Is there something I am missing? Do they have better administrations, is there something different about the parent/student body to account for such a difference, etc.?

For example, Prescott’s student body is 31% economically disadvantaged, but 62% are reading proficient and 54% are math proficient.

Compare that to a school like Pulaski (a school 1.6 miles away) - also a neighborhood school in a good area that does quite a bit of fundraising and seems to have heavy parent involvement. 38% economically disadvantaged, but only 35% proficient in reading and math.

Any insight?

We live directly across the street from our neighborhood CPS school. I applied to early learning for my 3 year old to enroll in PreK3. We are waitlisted and his position was #34. I’ve complained and called just about everyone and was told no one can help me do anything to change the status. We were told to wait and see what happens as the summer goes by.

I just checked his number again to see if we’ve moved at all. Much to my surprise, we did! We’re now waitlist #38. 🤬

Can someone please explain to me how the hell this is fair or makes sense to anyone?? Why are we continuing to be pushed back further and further on the waitlist? I am so ticked off and have nowhere to turn, so venting onto Reddit in search of some answers is all I have left.

Does anyone have any tips or anything that can be done to move up the list? Do you have an experience similar to ours? How did this workout for you? I appreciate it.

We are considering sending our child here due to being waitlisted with our local CPS school. I want to justify the cost as the tuition is WAY more than I expected compared to some other private schools.

Did you send your child here? Was it worth the money? Please share your experience. It would really help us out!

Hi Chicago moms! I'm currently expecting and while I'm planning to fully vaccinate and do it on schedule (2,4,6 months) I would like to have an option to potentially space them out e.g. do 2-3 vaccines every 2 weeks instead of 8 vaccines in 1 day (I know there is 6 in 1 shot combo for 6 vaccines out of 8). Can you please recommend a pediatrician/practice in Chicago who can be open to this approach?