Private back to Public in HS?

[Anonymous]

Hi all, my daughter moved to private school for 9th grade after attending MCPS for K–8. She still has strong local friendships and spends more time with her neighborhood friends than with her private school friends. She describes her feelings about the school as “indifferent” - she doesn’t love it, but def doesn’t hate it either.

She came to us tonight to ask about the possibility of returning to public school for her sophomore year.

For those of you whose children have transitioned from private to public high school, I’d really appreciate any tips, lessons learned, or things you wish you had known. She may be slightly behind on credits (her private school counts sports as PE), but she also has some middle-school credits that should help offset that.

Thank you!

[Anonymous]

My DD did not find her people immediately at her private school and spent a lot more time with her public school friends initially. By sophomore year, as she started to do more clubs and got involved with school based activities, she started to hang out more with her friends from her current private school than her neighborhood/private school friends. It was a slow transition and I don’t think she would have made the effort to cultivate new friendships if she knew she could hit the eject button and go back to public.

Also-I would encourage you to really think deeply about the reasons you switched to private. If you felt the academics would be better or the size or overall experience or maybe general culture/religious aspect drew to to the school, ask “has that proven to be the upgrade we were looking for?” If yes, stay and help her navigate the friendship piece. If no, maybe going back to public makes sense.

[Anonymous]

Why did you switch to private? Are those reasons still valid?

[Anonymous]

My kid was private for grades 6-8 and is now in public for HS. Still finding their people for lunch and other unstructured time at school, but they know kids from club sports.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DD did not find her people immediately at her private school and spent a lot more time with her public school friends initially. By sophomore year, as she started to do more clubs and got involved with school based activities, she started to hang out more with her friends from her current private school than her neighborhood/private school friends. It was a slow transition and I don’t think she would have made the effort to cultivate new friendships if she knew she could hit the eject button and go back to public.

Also-I would encourage you to really think deeply about the reasons you switched to private. If you felt the academics would be better or the size or overall experience or maybe general culture/religious aspect drew to to the school, ask “has that proven to be the upgrade we were looking for?” If yes, stay and help her navigate the friendship piece. If no, maybe going back to public makes sense.

This is great advice. There's also nothing wrong with having a couple friend groups from different areas of life! That's actually beneficial.

Fwiw, my youngest sibling did what you're describing back in the day and, looking back, thinks it was a bad call. Our local HS is/was considered quite strong, but you got lost if you were that basically good student who didn't make trouble.