Last week was rather stressful. I became one of those crazed, stressed out parents worried about her kid's comparative education. There's nothing more humorless than an hysterical parent freaked out that her kid is not achieving as much as a kid in the next town. I've made fun of those hysterical parents, but their fears are valid. Some schools are better than others. Schools and peer groups do make a difference in future career options and quality of life. I'm too aware of the statistics to brush these concerns away as the baseless ravings of a soccer mom.

For two days, I went to bed worried and woke up worried. I got on the phone with other moms in town and started to piece together all the facts.

I found out that a group of moms had complained to the school earlier in the year that there was too much writing homework. They had their kids in the town recreation baseball teams and on the traveling teams, and felt that homework was interfering with their kids' busy after school sports activities. Academic achievement wasn't important to them, because the kids were slated to take over the family pavement business after graduation.

Another group of moms with professional backgrounds want their kids to learn their times tables and do book reports.

There's a lot of diversity in this town, which is great, but the school doesn't know how to meet the demands of the different groups of parents.

I need to keep a close eye on my kid in the next few months. He's lost some skills in the past year with a new, untried teacher. We'll have to do a lot on the weekends and in the evenings to get him over this hump. There are a few good websites that help out with drilling multiplication tables. We'll do book reports at home. I'm not sure how we'll carve out time for all that, but we're going to have to do it.

I'm not sure how to keep my hysteria in check. Who wants to be a crazed soccer mom? Not me. We'll just have to keep a close eye on things. If I don't see a big improvement in the school system, then we'll have to move. We will probably have to move to a much smaller home in a town with a much more homogeneous population, but I can free ride on the demands on the school from other crazed soccer moms.

Hopefully, things will work out. Because we love our funky old house with a new kitchen. We are getting rather settled into this community. It is rather well situated near NYC and our family is so close by. Even though I passed on the request to run for town council, I think Steve is going to do it.

I worked a lot out in my head over the weekend, and I'm looking forward to going to sleep without worrying.