Saturday, October 19, 2013

No Place in the Kindergarten

When I found our apartment in Waiblingen I happily noticed the kindergarten on the first floor (Erdgeschoss in Germany) of the building. "Very convenient," I thought. I had heard that there is usually a waiting period, but I thought "how bad can it get?" After all the German government had passed a bill that starting from August 1, 2013 each child 2 years and older is entitled to a spot in a kindergarten. You can even sue the government if you don't get a spot.
So  I applied for a kindergarten spot right after we had moved in in May, and the head of the kindergarten told me that the application has to go through the city government and most likely her kindergarten might have a spot earliest in September, but more likely in spring of 2014. So I added a couple more kindergartens to the application, in the belief that would help.
Some time later the city government informed us that there MIGHT be a spot in a kindergarten near our house in the spring of 2014 if we could agree to sending our son to the kindergarten for only half a day. I thought that waiting period were ridiculous, but i agreed to the half day. But then a couple weeks later they told us: "sorry nothing until SEPTEMBER 2014 - PERHAPS" The only other option they gave us was checking with a couple of private kindergartens which are about three times as expensive as the public ones - and far away.
Since I am not familiar with all the details about my rights concerning the kindergarten spot, I thought, I get more information first and then try again - harder. In the meantime i wanted to take advantage of another new regulation of our amazing government - starting from August 1, 2013 if a family takes care of their child(ren) 2 years and older they will get a monthly subsidy of 100 Euro per child. But then I found out that only children born AFTER August 1, 2012 (YES 2012) get this money. The funny thing is - recently the government (or the responsible ministry) stated that the number of applications for this subsidy has been limited.
My math might be a little bit rusty, but how many children born after August 1, 2012 are there who are 2 years and older?

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