The dreaded day had arrived when the kids would be tested to be placed in the French public school system. In Paris there is a department of the schools ("L'académie de Paris"). called CASNAV (the "Centre Académique pour la Scolarisation des Nouveaux Arrivants et des enfants du Voyage") designed to welcome, test and place foreigners and others entering the French public schools. We had gone to this office in early July, directed there by a local school official, only to learn that we had just missed the testing (it had ended that morning). Testing would resume in late August. The first 50 families to arrive each day at the CASNAV office are tested. Others must come back the next day. So this day had been hanging over us all summer. As we knew it was coming, it gave us plenty of time to look forward to the bureaucratic hassles to come, not to mention the usual exam dread that teenagers inevitably have.
Up early, café (me) and chocolat chaud (the kids) with cereal. Out early, long-long metro ride to a distant suburb, then a long walk. We arrived at 8:30 a.m., a good half hour before the 9:00 a.m. opening time. To our horror we saw a throng of people outside of the CASNAV office. An efficient security guard from the Mairie de Paris was posted out front to do crowd control. The line of parents with their children started outside the office and stretched down the block and around the corner.
We had expected that a lot of people would arrive on the first day of testing after “les grandes vancances.” But we hadn’t expected something that looked like a crowd gathered outside the doors to a rock concert, with the usual jerks trying to push their way into the front of the line. With resignation, we took our place at the end of the line and were soon joined by even later-comers. We started what looked to be a very, very long wait.
We waited, and we waited. We drank a few sips of water (not too much for fear of needing a toilet). We ate a cracker (not too many for fear of being thirsty.) We talked. We speculated about when the line would start moving. We worried about all the people pushing in at the front of the line. Would we be in the first 50? Would we have to come back tomorrow and do this all over again? We drank another sip of water. Eventually boredom forced us to strike up a conversation with the (clearly) American man and his daughter who were directly behind us. This helped to pass the time and the hours (literally) slipped away. After a while, a man and his son from Australia, fighting their own boredom, joined our conversation.
Eventually, the efficient and friendly security guard came down the line handing out numbered tickets. After assuring himself that each family had a rightful place in line and hand not pushed their way in, he handed them a numbered ticket. [Editor's note: As Suzie described it to me, this involved the security guard verifying everyone's place in line by asking the few folks in front of them whether the people had, in fact, been in line from the beginning. This put the kabosh on line-jumpers.] We were soon in possession of our own yellow ticket – number 47. We just made it! Slowly the line advanced toward the door.
Another hour passed as Will and Andrew made friends with Daniel from Australia (age 15). Eventually, the two kids in front of us (French but having just moved from Naples where they attended an American school) also joined the English conversation.
What happened in this line is what often happens when people with something in common are stuck in close proximity – they bond quickly. By the end of our almost four hour wait in the line, I had made friends with the two parents and the kids had all exchanged contact information and made plans to go to a movie later that night.
About 12:30 we finally were ushered into the office and the children were whisked away for testing. Parents whisked into an office filled with many, many other parents waiting with documents in hand ready to establish the “dossier.” We waited. I got to know Daniel’s father Morie really well. We waited some more. Finally, it was my turn. In no time flat, I’d given them all the documents they needed, the self-addressed stamped envelopes, the two passport photos. Voila! Will and Andrew were official.
The kids came back with big smiles, happy the testing was done. After asking a few questions, I found out that the kids would probably be placed in a college relatively near us in the 14th arrondissement. Will would be in a “Welcome Class” and Andrew in an “Intensive French Class.” Eventually, they would be fully integrated into a regular French class. Learning the name of the school, Lycee-College Francois Villon, we went happily off toward a much need lunch and home.
Without exception, everybody associated with CASNAV was efficient, helpful, and welcoming, including the security guard. True to the word of the law (which we had checked out ahead of time) the French school system never asked us for proof of legal residency and scrupulously did not look in the visa section of our passports to see if we were here legally. While the wait was long and the day was exhausting, we were treated fairly in every way. Plus, we somehow miraculously placed ourselves in line right in between the only other English speakers in the whole place and we made new friends. It was a satisfying day in every way.
That was good. This was not. Later that evening, through researching the Lycee-College Francois Villon through Google, we discovered that Lycee Francois Villon is “L’un des plus mauvais lycees de France.” For you non-French speakers, “One of the worst lycees in France.” In fact, according to the article we found, in the "classement publié en janvier dernier par le magazine L’Etudiant[,] François-Villon se trouve à la 1 862e place sur 1 865 lycées passés au banc d’essai en France!" That means that out of 1,865 lycees (high schools) in France, François-Villon ranked 1,862. We also found articles quoting parents worried about the security of their kids at François-Villon.
A parental freak out ensued. What to do? Stay tuned....
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