Touring public schools

[Anonymous]

Do public middle and high schools allow parents and/or students to come tour? DS is entering private elementary but we want to leave the door open to public middle and almost certainly public high school. Is there anything I need to do before unenrolling from the district? I recently talked to a mom in a neighboring county who said her daughter wasn't given any information and was banned from visiting the public high school, since they aren't technically enrolled in the district currently (Daughter goes to a Catholic middle school).

If tours are not allowed, how can we can get detailed information about the curriculum and day-to-day student and academic life? As a small example, I want to make sure DS would be reading full length novels in English 9 through AP, not just modern lit and excerpts.

[Anonymous]

High schools typically have information sessions in the fall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:High schools typically have information sessions in the fall.

This. And they are usually in the evening and lots of private school parents attended when I went to them.

If you’re interested in curriculum though you won’t get that from a tour anyway. You should go online and get the state requirements. But even then it will depend on the school and teacher and even year. My oldest was reading novels in MS but younger ones didn’t.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do public middle and high schools allow parents and/or students to come tour? DS is entering private elementary but we want to leave the door open to public middle and almost certainly public high school. Is there anything I need to do before unenrolling from the district? I recently talked to a mom in a neighboring county who said her daughter wasn't given any information and was banned from visiting the public high school, since they aren't technically enrolled in the district currently (Daughter goes to a Catholic middle school).

If tours are not allowed, how can we can get detailed information about the curriculum and day-to-day student and academic life? As a small example, I want to make sure DS would be reading full length novels in English 9 through AP, not just modern lit and excerpts.

Stay in Catholic school. Anybody is allowed into most AP courses so they are pretty watered down.

[Anonymous]

Sometimes there are visit days for kids entering the school the next year. But that’s not early enough if you’re also applying to privates. What we did was talk to babysitters, neighbors, sports teammates, lifeguards at the pool, etc. to understand how the public school worked. We also went to concerts and sports events and anything else vaguely public to understand what the atmosphere was like.

[Anonymous]

OP the neighbor you talked to didn’t attend the school
So no tour. Schools don’t do that or they would just be constantly touring. It is disruptive to the students learning to have school day tours. Private schools need the revenue so they have a dedicated staff member to tour prospective parents around. Public schools don’t.
You kid is 5 or 6 entering elementary you don’t need this info yet. Relax.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do public middle and high schools allow parents and/or students to come tour? DS is entering private elementary but we want to leave the door open to public middle and almost certainly public high school. Is there anything I need to do before unenrolling from the district? I recently talked to a mom in a neighboring county who said her daughter wasn't given any information and was banned from visiting the public high school, since they aren't technically enrolled in the district currently (Daughter goes to a Catholic middle school).

If tours are not allowed, how can we can get detailed information about the curriculum and day-to-day student and academic life? As a small example, I want to make sure DS would be reading full length novels in English 9 through AP, not just modern lit and excerpts.

If your kid is in elementary, I wouldn’t worry about high school. The high school curriculum will probably be completely different by the time your child enters it, so whatever you learn now will be pointless.

[Anonymous]

Ma'am this is a Wendy's

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do public middle and high schools allow parents and/or students to come tour? DS is entering private elementary but we want to leave the door open to public middle and almost certainly public high school. Is there anything I need to do before unenrolling from the district? I recently talked to a mom in a neighboring county who said her daughter wasn't given any information and was banned from visiting the public high school, since they aren't technically enrolled in the district currently (Daughter goes to a Catholic middle school).

If tours are not allowed, how can we can get detailed information about the curriculum and day-to-day student and academic life? As a small example, I want to make sure DS would be reading full length novels in English 9 through AP, not just modern lit and excerpts.

Stay in Catholic school. Anybody is allowed into most AP courses so they are pretty watered down.

LOL that the Catholic school would be any different - there's a pretty wide range of abilities in any school - public or private.

[Anonymous]

You can contact the principal and the department chairs and ask for that information.

[Anonymous]

This is really frustrating if they won’t let parents tour the public school. Good luck getting people to enroll their kids if you don’t allow tours.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is really frustrating if they won’t let parents tour the public school. Good luck getting people to enroll their kids if you don’t allow tours.

Most parents enroll their kids at the local public school by default, because private costs money that most families don't consider an option & homeschooling requires a parent at home when most families have 2 parents working so public school it is. Looking at the school/class sizes, getting enough enrollment is one problem public schools do not seem to have.

[Anonymous]

We do a parent curriculum night in the spring each year. It's mostly for 8th grade parents who are helping choose courses for their 9th grader, but I've had 6th grade families come before to see what options are out there.

Tour the school during the school day and sit in on classes though? No. There is not the staff to safely do that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP the neighbor you talked to didn’t attend the school
So no tour. Schools don’t do that or they would just be constantly touring. It is disruptive to the students learning to have school day tours. Private schools need the revenue so they have a dedicated staff member to tour prospective parents around. Public schools don’t.
You kid is 5 or 6 entering elementary you don’t need this info yet. Relax.

When we contemplated the switch to our zoned public high school (Fairfax County) we very easily scheduled a tour with a parent volunteer.

[Anonymous]

I was able to tour two separate public middle schools with my daughter when we switched out of private. I imagine the high school would have let me also. Reach out to the principal of those schools or the secretary to schedule something. Specific curriculum questions should be directed to the teachers of those classes though. After the tour, ask if you could be put in touch with one of the 9th grade English instructors and just send them an email (or science, etc)