"If you send your kid to private school, you are a bad person"

[pnwmom]

33. Each of my children began in public schools and continued till middle or high school.

I found alternatives when the schools stopped meeting their needs. They continued to interact with their neighborhood friends, even though they weren't in class with them during the day. And I continue to work for school levies.

According to standardized test scores, our school district is excellent -- but all the emphasis on test-taking and uniformity wasn't good for my kids. Because they were spread out in age, I was very active in the schools for many years, but I couldn't stop the tide. I pulled out each of them before they drowned, as any good parent would do. All of them needed a different kind of education, which they ended up getting at different private schools. Ironically, our public school district 20 years earlier might have been fine for them, because it was headed by a superintendent who strongly supported an individualized education. Now the district wants all kids on the same page on the same day at the same time, which doesn't work for all kids -- definitely not mine.