from K-QED.

I'm starting today's episode at John C O'Connell High School.

It's the beginning of October, and I'm here for the school fair where there's

probably more than 70 schools that all are represented here and hundreds if not

thousands of parents and kids running about trying to figure out where it's best for their kids to go to school.

You can definitely feel in the room that there's a lot of anxiety around it.

My name is Inich Sosa and we live in the Lower Hat, San Francisco.

And what do you make of this fair today? I feel stressed just because this is a full-time job and right now I'm not sure how

I'm gonna fit in this process into our already full lives.

Susa is stressed because sending your kid to public school in San Francisco isn't a simple process.

When I went to kindergarten in suburban Pennsylvania, I just went to the school in my neighborhood.

It was all pretty straightforward.

But that's not how San Francisco and some other cities in America do it.

Parents are shopping schools at this fair because they have a choice in the matter.

A kindergartner here could go to any of the 72 elementary schools in the entire city.

It's really a very windy road.

It's just very overwhelming.

Parents do get to list their most wanted schools,

but there's no guarantee where their kid will end up.

It could be a 45 minute drive across town or at a low performing school.

It's this uncertainty that drives parents crazy.

I'm Olivia Allen Price. You're listening to Bay Curious, where we explore the Bay Area one question at a time.

...