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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Ultimately, if you choose a private school, especially after attending the local public one, you ARE making a statement that the public school is not good enough for your child.  There are many reason why you might make that decision (wanting a religious influence, wanting smaller classes, wanting a different group of peers, wanting different academic opportunities), but that IS what your move to private is saying.

It's not unexpected that someone who has decided the public school IS good enough for their kids would feel a little insulted by your choice.  Good friends would not say that and would want things to work out for you whatever that may be.  You are making a value judgment too OP and you said your standards are higher than theirs.... what is good enough for them is not good enough for you.  If you want to ditch public, than don't be so surprised that supporters of your local public feel *a little* rejected.  You ARE rejecting their school and their standards.[/quote]

Given your likely neighborhood(s), I am guessing that you are rejecting their [u]priorities[/u] more than their [u]standards[/u].

Let's assume for the sake of discussion that all parents (rich, poor, in between) want good school standards for their kids.  If you were in a really bad neighborhood school, folks would be happy for you being able to get out, plus you could be a role model for their kids.  If you were in a good cluster, they would be a bit puzzled but OK with the choice as it doesn't reflect poorly on them (one fewer student at Whitman will not affect their reputation at all).  But I am guessing that's not it.  It's the small currently-trendy group of neighborhoods in the middle that pose an issue: Alexandria, south Arlington, Capitol Hill, Columbia Heights, Brookland.  Those communities now have enough critical parent mass to have good elementary schools, but the involved parents haven't been there long enough to affect anything beyond that.

As you go higher up the school chain, it takes longer and longer to turn a school around: more and more parties take an interest (see Dunbar and Eastern and their alumni, for example).  Athletics rears its ugly head.  Politicians claim to care.  College admissions come into play.  The student body is bigger.  There is a LOT more inertia; face it, folks, we're talking decades here to turn around a HS, and your kids will be out of school long before then.  Plus its a LOT harder to make up for iffy middle or high school educations at home than it is for elementary schools.

Furthermore, if you live in one of those neighborhoods (overrepresented on DCUM BTW), all of you likely COULD afford private school -- you probably all have good educations and white-collar jobs as those are the sorts of folks who tend to believe that with only a few more "involved" parents, they could turn everything urban around.  Some have nice cars.  Some have nicer houses (at least on the inside).  Many have expensive weekend hobbies.  People eat out more or pay more for better-quality groceries.  An awful lot of families in those neighborhoods have one spouse not working or working part-time from home.  Some go to Europe or New York on a regular basis.

And you all paid for location because you wanted to live near/in a city.

At some point, people have to choose where to spend their money.  You are now choosing to spend money on school.  Some of your friends are not, they are choosing to spend it someplace else.  That is not your problem, nor is it theirs.

It is a difference, and they may feel judged.  However, that is not your problem either.

Be bigger  :lol:

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