School Rules: How to become a TDSB parent

You've made it to Toronto and you know schools start in September, so as long as you have an address that matches the school you want to send your child to, you're sorted, right? Wrong. Getting your kid into school can be a little challenging if you're not following what other Toronto mothers know about how the system works. To uncode it follow a few basic steps.

REGISTERING FOR SCHOOL

1. Address: Your home address is linked to a school in your new neighbourhood, so when you're looking for a house, prioritise according to your demands. If you love a school that's in a neighbourhood of your choice your child may not be going there if your specific address links it to another school in the same vicinity. For a foolproof plan that doesn't leave you feeling wronged or cheated address check twos ways:

a) Go to the #TDSB site and plug in your address here: http://www.tdsb.on.ca/FindYour/School.aspx
b) Call up the school office, give them your address and ask them to confirm a match

2. Address Proof: Scamsters abound here too. So, an address isn't good enough. If you've just moved, you need to show proof of residential address. This could be a copy of your lease, or sale deed, if you've been able to buy a home. Or you could show your drivers' license that shows your new address. Check with your school to see what else works for address proof for them.

3. Register your child: You need your child's birth certificate + health/immunisation records when you go in to register him/her. If your child is born overseas and has a foreign passport, bring the passport with all other documents. Without those docs, a school won't complete the registration.

4. HELPFUL TIDBIT: You don't have to start school in the beginning of the school year. If you come in the middle of the school year, don't fret. As soon as your child is registered he can start going to school. We arrived in Toronto in early June and In registered my five year old into Junior Kindergarten immediately. I hadn't expected him to go to school until the fall. But an aunt suggested that I ask the school to let him start right away. The administrator was a little uh-huh about it but the principal was enthusiastic so Riyan started the very next day. It was a great introduction to his neighbourhood and he got a chance to make some summer friends.

If you follow these steps, you should have no problem.

Other challenges, stories? TDSB hasn't been so peachy an experience for you? Tell us about it.

I am not the typical immigrant to Toronto. I lived in the city for a little under a year almost a decade ago, my sister and brother both studied in Canada, and I have visited Montreal and Toronto numerous times. I lived in the United States for 10 years so I'm not likely to experience culture shock as I make my way through this city's prominent and well-established bureaucracies. Also, I have friends, former bosses, acquaintances and hundreds of family members peppered across the GTA. Others, I know or have read about, have had a harder time settling in if they are fresh off the boat, that wonderfully pejorative way in which newcomers are labeled and identified; their accents, their expressions, their reactions giving away the discomfort they feel in their new home.

But Toronto is new for me as a mother of two children unaccustomed to a city of services, as Toronto is. I decided to write this blog as I navigate my start here in this city as a parent and a newcomer with a family. What is common about the Toronto we inhabit and how do we access all that this city offers without understanding how it works? Is it still The City That Works as Harper's Magazine coined it in 1975? As I inhabit Toronto in my new avatar with a family divorcing itself from it's other home, I hope that our experience of Toronto will help others who start anew here in Tkaronto"where there are trees standing in the water."