Reply to How to consider school size when evaluating private ES?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here:  Thanks all.  Love to hear from more parents whose kids actually started in a private school with fewer than 35 kids.  How did your kids fare once they got to upper ES and middle school?  Do you wish you’d sent them to larger schools?

Re: the poster who questions my concern about a huge grade (>150 kids) starting in K, my concerns are around feeling like a number at such a big school and insufficient supervision at recess. School principal at our local public said the min required adult-to-student ratio at recess was 1 adult to every 50 (!!) kids. How can that be that safe? [/quote]

That's totally not safe. But the problem isn't the total number of kids in the grade, it's the adult-child ratio and your deranged principal. You need to separate questions of adult-child ratio from questions of total size of school. They're very different things.

150 is a lot for lower elementary, but they don't necessarily feel like a number if the teaching is right. They spend almost the whole day in their classroom anyway. It's not like they're in a room of 150. And honestly, as a parent at a school with 50 per grade, bigger is appealing to me. Really big schools are cost-effective and can offer a ton of stuff, and there are more kids at your child's academic level and sharing their interests, whatever that may be.

I don't believe my particular children would have been harmed by a school of 150 per grade, if adult child ratios were appropriate. You need to figure out whether your child *needs* a very small school to the extent it's worth accepting the tradeoffs, or if you're having a fantasy life in which a really small school can somehow also have the nice things that bigger schools have. There's really no way to do that, even with tons of money, because money can't buy people.[/quote]

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