Buying the teacher (and school) of your choice?

[Anonymous]

According to a friend of a friend, some wealthy, powerful MoCo families in her school have 'bought' their child their teacher of choice (demanding that their child be placed in certain teacher's class) by donating $$$$ or equipment or out-buying other parents at fundraising time. Is this common? I know it is a common practice at private schools, but darn, I was taken aback by the thought of it happening at public schools...

[Anonymous]

All I know if that some of the wealthiest parents at our school had no say whatsoever when their kids were placed in classes. I heard some were quite disappointed, and these were people who were on the board. OK, not like any of the teachers were known to be horrid, but they got the new, unknown teacher versus the established, known to be excellent, teachers.

[Anonymous]

I don't think this is common practice in either public or private schools. In our public school, kids of the wealthiest/most donating parents were scattered amongst the various teachers. At our current private school, it's the same - children of big donors and board members are in all of the classes, not clustered with the "best" teacher(s). Not saying it doesn't happen anywhere, but I haven't seen it.

[Anonymous]

Hmmm, I just had a (a very non-wealthy) friend tell me she asked the principal of the school a couple of years if her child could be transferred to another teacher's classroom for one reason or another. He told her to put it in writing, and both years they accommodated the request. Maybe your friend gave cash for nothing.

[Anonymous]

I think it depends on the principal. In theory, if you have a good reason as opposed to a spurious one (I'd put having a new teacher in this category), you'd think a principal would want to accommodate the request without cash changing hands. That said, we tried to get a kid transferred to a different class in a MoCo elementary a few years back, and got a long song-and-dance about how everybody else from this particular class would also want to transfer, and finally we got a flat-out refusal.