Palisades High (Continuation)

In 2009 I tried to enroll my previously home-schooled daughter into Palisades High for 11th grade. It was a day I would not like to relive. We thought it would be a good transitional experience for her before going to college. I called the school to inquire; they told me our address is not in their area, so we should go to TAFT in the Valley. I told them it was a mistake because all our neighbor’s kids go to Pali High, instead they treated me like a cheat. They told me our address doesn't exist and it is suspicious because our street name is the same as our family name. Two weeks later they found that we are on their map and eligible. On the enrollment day we witnessed different students swearing, tongue kissing under a tree and playing a card game on the side walk. In the shabby dinged up hall of a prison like admissions building with metal bars on windows and doors full of anti gun and drug posters like “Bring a gun to school and you are suspended” I had to fill out paper work. A high quality, well illustrated, multi-page brochure on all possible drugs, their uses and effects, and a waiver to allow the nurse to give my daughter condoms whenever she asks were handed to me. Although my daughter was educated about these, until now it was all theory and a high school is not where you would expect to have to deal with these realities.
Because we immigrated from a poor, developing country we didn't have my daughter's immunization records up till age of three. The school’s nurse would not sign us off without them. I assured them that we had a full physical done as part of the immigration process, my daughter was immunized, but we don't have a paper record and there is no way we can retrieve it twelve years later. The nurse didn't buy that, she told me that they have had other students from our country and they were able to retrieve their records. Well, we didn't leave our country for no reason. There were no electronic records back there in 1997. The doctor took a piece of brown, hand torn paper, dipped a squirrel brush into a jam jar of glue and pasted a new page to a paper from your previous visit. The doctor would then hand write what was done, prescribe meds in the same manner and store it on a shelf in ABC order. Once they know you left the country your records went into the dumpster. I can retrieve this if I have a time machine or falsify documents. Another enrollment stopper was the fact that my daughter was home-schooled. She didn't have the traditional transcripts with credits. I asked for their help with that, for example, give me an example of a transcript. Their solution was to have her start high school all over again, ninth grade. We were enrolling into 11th grade. They didn't care that she was well behaved, personally tutored and won awards. They sent us to the Vice Principle who basically told us we can't finish enrolling, don't call us we will call you. We went home feeling discriminated against. If this happened back in my former country I would not be surprised. But in the US, this is unacceptable. The worst thing about it is that kids from all over Los Angeles would be bussed in to this school, but we who live here have to deal with these roadblocks to get in.
Later that day at home I Googled "homeschool" and Kaplan Academy came up. I submitted my contact info and an hour later my phone rang. I will never forget Rick from Kaplan Academy. He introduced me to their online school and answered all my questions. What about transcripts and credits? He emails me a website with templates and tutorials. Immunization? He emails me a waiver. He had an answer and a solution for everything. Flash back to 1996. I am asking a nice older Armenian woman friend who is telling me I should immigrate to the USA, "What would I do there all by myself?" She replies, "You would be treated like a white woman, with respect." That is how Rick and Kaplan treated us with respect. We were welcomed. Rick called almost every day to offer help and answer questions until we were enrolled and ready to go. They even gave us a laptop. This is the America I left everything for. Flash forward to 2011. My daughter graduates from Kaplan; one of their best students. She made a speech at the graduation. She worked for a year and started community college, paid for it herself, too. 2015, she is graduating from the community college with highest honors, 4.0 GPA. She got accepted to every top college she applied to on the West coast, USC, UCLA, UC Berkley, etc. She is starting UCLA in September, plans to work and be a full time student. Palisades High School administrators never did call us back, but I am grateful, because we did better without them. Kaplan Academy, now called CalPac (see www.Cal-Pacs.org), continues to be a great, innovative, free, charter online school for grades 6th – 12th.