School Days Part I

One of the attractive features of a job in Kazakhstan was the ability for us to immerse our children in the Russian language.  Our two oldest daughters got a pretty good foundation in Russian because their grandma (Babushka) spent extended time with us visiting when they were young and because Yulia was able to speak Russian at home with them.  Then our oldest went to school and started speaking to her mom in English.  That upset the carefully crafted dynamic that we had built.  The girls understand Russian, but need a lot of immersion and to be outside of their comfort zone in order to really start speaking it.

International schools in Kazakhstan are expensive - even with the generous education allowance that is part of our contract with NU.  This is especially true when you have four school-age children, and will have those children for the foreseeable future!  We had planned, since we took the job, on enrolling the girls in a local Russian-language school.  It would be a trial by fire, a sink or swim moment for them.  We talked to them a lot about this and they agreed that they would give it a try - they are young enough that they weren't too scared at the prospect of something new.

Then we arrived in Astana.  I had been in contact with the international scholars office about schools and they told me that there wouldn't be any problems with our children attending school.  They even contacted the school where the children should attend and told us that we could go and tour the school when we arrived.  Great!

A few days after arriving, I contacted the office about setting up a school visit and getting started on registration.  They set up an appointment for us to visit a school on Wednesday (August 6) and see about registration.  When we showed up at the school we were told that the first school that we had been told about was not accepting students from our area (schools attendance is based on geographic location here, too), but that our helper from the international office would take us to the correct school.  We got in the van and drove to the school.  It was a nice-looking school in a more established neighborhood on our side of the river/our side of town.  When we spoke to the ladies who were there taking care of registration we were told that NU was not part of the geographic region for their school and they would not accept us.

Our assigned school was a new school - No. 75 - that was still being built, but that would be ready for the school year to begin on 1 September.  We were also told that the school would be accepting students and that representatives from the school would come to do registration beginning later in the day.  They would also be there the next day.  We left, a bit disappointed, but not too discouraged.  We made a plan to go the next day with everyone in between some of my orientation meetings.

Hostility

When we arrived at the school the next day and walked into the reception room we were met with a great deal of hostility by the woman who was registering students. Here is the gist of the conversation we had with the woman.  (Her comments are red.  Ours are black.)

Where do you live?
At Nazarbayev University.
Where are you from?
America.
Your children can't study here. Go to the international schools. Our schools are only for Kazakhs.
We are legal residents of Kazakhstan and pay taxes.  Why can't our kids attend school?
Who told you that you could come here to register your kids (directed at our helper)?
That's not important (from our helper).  Why can't the children attend school?
The government pays a lot of money for each kid for their education.  This is an education for Kazakh kids.  I've been to America and you can't study there at public schools if you're not an American.
That's not right. Many non-US citizens study in US schools - especially if they are legal and pay taxes.
We've already turned away Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Russians who are here legally working.  Our schools are only for Kazakhs.  It's the law.
Tell us where to find that law.
Not until you tell me who said you could come here and register your children for school.

At this point we left - feeling quite upset and quite discouraged.  We decided to go and look at an international school that we had learned about online.  We went to the school and really liked it.  It was about half as much as the other international schools and the program was half in Russian and half in English, so it would have been a good fit.  We asked about getting spots, but were told that the registration was closed for the coming year because of the high demand.  We put our names on the waiting list for the next year and left.  Still discouraged.

Our helper from the international scholars office told us that he would call the Ministry of Education to find out about the law and that I should speak with my dean about the issue so that if pressure needed to be applied, we could start that process.  Yulia and I started talking about alternatives to schooling, including home-schooling for a year or just trying to find spots for the older girls in the other international school.  It was kind of a rough afternoon.

Hope
I got an email later in the day, towards evening.  Our helper had spoken with the director of the school and we could meet her the next day at the school - she may want to test your children's Russian ability.  That was good news, but we were still quite wary of what was going to happen.  We started drilling the children and warned them that they would have to be on their best behavior and best Russian.

We drove to the new school.  It was already Friday, and we were ending our first week in Kazakhstan.  We pulled up to the school - after having to pass through the construction of the apartment buildings that go around the entire block where the school is located - and saw that the school was still very much under construction. We got out and headed into the school where we asked a worker if anyone was in the school.  He pointed us down the hall and we went that way until we found the one room that looked like it was about ready.  In it was a long table, a couple of young women, and a number of chairs at the table and around the wall.

To be continued...