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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Query:  If you can afford to purchase a luxury car with all the bells and whistles, why shouldn’t you if you so choose, or should you allow society to shame you into purchasing a more modest vehicle?  So if an elite private school offers a superior educational experience, and you can afford to send your child to one, why wouldn’t you?  Why should society shame the parents who send their kids to such schools or the kids who attend?  Perhaps society should a examine how the public schools have failed our kids and misspent all the public funds allocated toward public education.[/quote]

The only problem is that the choice increasingly seems to be between the luxury car, and taking Metrobus.  The latter is crowded, inconvenient, and sporadically doesn't show up.  We don't need to shame the people with cars but we do need the bus to function much much better than it does.  We need it to be safe, reliable, accessible, and even pleasant and enriching to ride.  Unfortunately there are people who feel that if the bus is nice to ride, that makes their luxury car less special.[/quote]

This is a great analogy. My kid was lucky enough to get a Mercedes for the price of a Yugo, but it still grieves me that it I couldn’t feel good about letting him take the bus.

For what it’s worth, after spending many years rubbing elbows with Mercedes owners, I honestly have yet to meet one who doesn’t support improving buses. I have literally never heard one express anything but good will and support towards the bus system. [/quote]

What is goodwill and support?  Is that like Thoughts and Prayers?  Or is that like higher taxes and a willingness to ride on it so as to show all of society it is safe and reliable and deserves continued investment?

This continued private school vs public school(and heck public vs public) conversation is a microcosm of our values as a society.  We highly value the CEO and pay them as though only a few select folks can do the job (hint: this is not true), but don’t value the janitor or grocery store worker, or nurse, or delivery person near as much. Yet, a pandemic hits and we realize which actually have the most societal value.  This doesn’t mean the CEO isn’t important to the society, but we should question if their importance is worthy of billions of dollars more.

The same is true with private schools.  Do they add value? Sure.  But how and why and what is the worth.  The truth is they provide the same thing that every  parent wants for their child; a safe environment, where they are supported, exposed to different things and allowed to blossom into the best version of themselves.  So why then are they accessible to a select few and yet public school is required to educate all who come, anyway they come?  At a time when many private schools have so much, can we honestly say that we should be fundraising for an Entrepreneurial Center when there are public school systems trying to figure out how and where to build a school in order to alleviate overcrowding.

Example: We know that writing instruction is better in private school than public.  So to solve this what happens? Some parents pay for tutoring, some get additional books, some switch their kid to private school.  However, the societal helpful thing would be to lobby the schools, BOE, County, state, and whoever else needs to  hear it, that English classes in public  should be smaller so that writing instruction could be more rigorous or in the absence of smaller classes, schools from MS through HS should employ Graduate assistants in those classes so as to allow for an additional person to help out and provide feedback on rigorous writing assignments.  Because we can’t expect a public school teacher to do so for 80-120 students while a private school teacher does it for 60max, right.[/quote]

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