How did you decide a school is a bad fit in HS and what did you do?

[Anonymous]

It seems so hard to make a switch. We know a child who went from one Big 3 to another in 10th but that child must have figured out it was a bad fit within the first few weeks or else it would have been hard to put an application together. Do most kids just switch to public?

[Anonymous]

We moved our youngest. We initially resisted a move thinking "no one moves in 10th or 11th grade," but that's not true. There are a handful of people who leave every year, and there are a handful of kids who start in a new school the next year. The more we looked into it, the more we realized that it wasn't all that unusual. Some went coed to single sex; some went single sex to coed; others single sex to single sex. Some to boarding school.

We were at a school that was incredibly rigid and offered few curriculum offerings. We didn't notice the lack of choice for one of our older kids (middle kid went elsewhere) because it worked for older kid. In mid-9th, we realized that it wasn't working. We kept trying to make it work, and by the end of the year, I knew that I couldn't return. I searched high and low and found another school. For the right reasons, there are great schools that have spots (and you'd be surprised if I told you which ones). Perhaps our situation was unique; perhaps someone took pity on us, but we moved after June 1 and we made it work. (And, no, we are not politicians; our kid doesn't play a sport; we do not build buildings. We are nice people who needed a change and found a school that we love and we've never looked back.)

[Anonymous]

What school PP?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We moved our youngest. We initially resisted a move thinking "no one moves in 10th or 11th grade," but that's not true. There are a handful of people who leave every year, and there are a handful of kids who start in a new school the next year. The more we looked into it, the more we realized that it wasn't all that unusual. Some went coed to single sex; some went single sex to coed; others single sex to single sex. Some to boarding school.

We were at a school that was incredibly rigid and offered few curriculum offerings. We didn't notice the lack of choice for one of our older kids (middle kid went elsewhere) because it worked for older kid. In mid-9th, we realized that it wasn't working. We kept trying to make it work, and by the end of the year, I knew that I couldn't return. I searched high and low and found another school. For the right reasons, there are great schools that have spots (and you'd be surprised if I told you which ones). Perhaps our situation was unique; perhaps someone took pity on us, but we moved after June 1 and we made it work. (And, no, we are not politicians; our kid doesn't play a sport; we do not build buildings. We are nice people who needed a change and found a school that we love and we've never looked back.)

Good to hear🥰