Reply to About to switch to private and about to lose some friends

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm frustrated and annoyed when our friends choose private.  And, as individuals many of them do have well thought out reasons: they want a school that matches their religious/cultural tradition or they have a child with special needs.  However, taken collectively all those choices mean that even in our relatively well off city, the schools are majority low-income kids.  And they are nice capable kids, but there isn't a block of wealthy and middle class parents pressuring the schools to do better and pressuring our city to spend more money-instead as a middle class parent (by education if not by wealth) I've encountered the "if you don't like it, get out" mentality from school officials.

I wouldn't stop being your friend-I value having a diverse group of friends, and I wouldn't have any friends if I dropped people every time they do something I don't approve of, but, yeah, I'm disappointed.  [/quote]

This is very well reasoned and written and sums up the frustrations I have heard. Here are my questions for you though: are you satisfied with your child's education? What grades are they in? And if you were not, do you have the money to move or go private?

I apologize for those being personal questions, but (cynically) very often I have found that what appears to be a philosophical decision is at its root really an economic one.

In addition, the part I find unconvincing about the argument above is that it assumes that there are enough affluent and politically savvy parents out there who could totally change the schools if only their kids weren't in private. In my neighborhood, I can guess that there aren't nearly enough affluent families around to affect the culture and standards of a school whose kids are majority impoverished, and whose numbers are growing. I try to be positive but this is our reality and our kids only get one childhood.[/quote]

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