should we choose private or public

[Anonymous]

Wow. Thanks everyone for sharing your opinion. To address some questions from the replies. We are not trust fund babies. Neither are we. But we do have some savings from previous investment, not too much though, like a couple of millions, which I believe is enough to cover our kids future college tuition. For the retirement savings, because we both love our jobs and we don’t have requirements on retirement age, we are likely to stay working until the day I die - that’s the reason I am not worried about life after retirement. But for the k-12 private tuition, I prefer not to use any savings to pay for that, so I do feel very stretchy depending on our income.
Why my husband is so determined to put his kids into private? It was because he got bullied in MS in a brutal way. He was a nerd back then and yes he still is. Until his parents switching him to private his MS life had been a nightmare. He is worried that our kids would experience what he had which would be unacceptable to both of us. Our kids are bright, quiet, intelligent and mature. You can say that the money we are about to throw on private is not only buying a great education for our kids but also buying an ease for DH.
And we are not gonna chance the entry to private, so we will pay full without applying for any FA. Just as many suggested here( thx!), we would consider to let the kids to start from MS, and attend the public elementary which is not only 10/10 but also walkable from our house.

[Anonymous]

We spend $60K on four kids at a $200K income, so theoretically I suppose we could spend $100K for two kids on a $300K income. But this seems, frankly, like a terrible idea. The marginal gains from going to a $50k per child school vs, say, a $30K per child school are limited, and, while there is some relation, price is more orthogonal to educational quality than one would think. A lot of that money gets spent on paint and landscaping instead of textbooks and talented instructors, and in any case, very expensive schools are no better at choosing good curricula than more moderate ones. And possibly worse at it, since incoming student quality + family resources is great at masking problems. Lucy Caulkins and her ilk still infest some of the big local names.

TL;DR private is probably a good idea, but look for something less pricey.

[Anonymous]

OP, you need to best understand your kids and determine if they are the type to get bullied or not. Private school isn't necessarily going to save them on that front if you pick the wrong private school.

Plenty of nerdy kids have lots of friends, engage in school activities and are never bullied...while the oddball kid on the JV football team may get mercilessly bullied.