Would you buy your way out of bad public schools by sending your child to a private school?

[SheilaT]

25. I moved my two sons from an excellent public school district

in Kansas, the Shawnee Mission School District, to an even better private school, the Barstow School in Kansas City, MO.

The issue initially was bullying. We did not know at the time that the oldest son had Asperger's Syndrome. All we knew was that he had no friends, his being smart was looked down upon, and he was being bullied. A friend whose son was a year older than mine, who'd attended the same elementary school, called me up in October, when my son was in 6th grade, her son in 7th. That school district does a 7-8 middle school, which is a very bad way to do it, in my opinion. The 8th graders pick on the 7th graders who when they become 8th graders pick on the 7th graders. Her son had had similar social problems as my son at the elementary school, even though her son is not autistic. She told me that I could not under any circumstances consider sending my son the the middle school. It got so bad for them that they moved their son to a different middle school in the same district.

What we got were class sizes half of what they were in the public school. My kid was no longer being bullied. The kids at the private school valued academics and now my son had friends. He did knowledge bowl and science bowl, and was instrumental in his team going to National Science Bowl when he was in 11th and 12th grades.

That very first year he was in Barstow, the private school, we then got a wake-up call about the younger son, now in 3rd grade. When we went to the parent-teacher conference when the first report cards came out, we heard the teacher describe a child we did not recognize. Worse yet, he was becoming the class clown. I don't want a class clown disrupting the class, and I sure as heck didn't want my son being the one doing that. So we moved him over to the private school second semester.

I would have cleaned houses or worked at McDonald's to afford to send my boys there. The concentration on academics was wonderful. They were learning new things the day before the last day of school. In the public school, kids don't seem to do anything but watch videos the last week or so of the school year. And this is in a good public school district.

I do support public schools totally. I do not believe I should have gotten a voucher, nor should I be exempt from any bit of taxes that support the public schools. The public schools should be funded so that they can have the small class sizes my kids had as well as have the full resources for all the special needs kids they must take in.

Here's another important thing to keep in mind about school funding: Even if you have 18 kids, there will come a time when your children will no longer be in school. Or you might have 2 kids or no kids. In any case, the time during which you have children in school is only a portion of your working life. We all need to understand that having good, well-funded public schools is in the very best interest of all of us.

When I first visited Barstow, before I'd fully committed to sending my kids there, I was very concerned that I'd experience an attitude of "We're better than anyone else." I did not experience that. Every parent I ever talked to was extremely grateful to be able to send their kids to this wonderful a school. Oh, it wasn't perfect. But no place run by mere mortals can possibly be.

I sent my kids to schools in four different states. Almost universally the teachers were truly dedicated to teaching kids. But what I saw among the teachers at the private school was that they were happy. They knew they had the support of administration as well as the parents. Some of them said things like they'd only planned to teach there until they could get a better-paying position in a public school district, but found they liked teaching there so much that they stayed.

And in a more direct answer to your question, would you buy your way out of bad public schools, my answer is Only an idiot would keep their kid in a bad public school if there were any alternative at all.