Reply to Budgeting for Private School -- Convince my spouse

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The Blair magnet is highly selective and the admissions cycle is complete for next fall. You'd be better going to Richard Montgomery where you can take Honors classes starting in 9th grade and choose to enter the IB program in 11th if you qualify. In truth, your kid can get a great education at any FCPS or MCPS school. I'm confused about where you live, though. If you are in DC, then you have school choice. If you are near to DC, APS, FCPS, MCPS, with a short commute to Capitol Hill, your home school is fine. Not perfect, but neither is a private school. I mean sure, we'd all like our kids to be in small classes with great teachers from K-12, but that's not always realistic. Middle school at public is pretty bad IMO, which is why we did private for K-8 and then switched to public in 9th. That might be a good compromise for you. Seriously, though, what district close to Capitol Hill has you living in a place where your zoned high school is truly awful? Are you in PG County?[/quote]

I haven't provided the details because I fear my spouse will find this thread if someone recognizes me, but we are in APS zoned for Swanson and W-L.   Swanson was a train wreck for my kids; they basically were only engaged for 30 minutes a day, spent the rest of class time reading, drawing, sometimes napping -- and that was before the pandemic, and then everything went out the window and it was "no new learning" spring, followed by a year of "won't anyone turn on their camera" or "so-so, are you there" virtual schooling.  we left for private and it was night and day, as did almost all of the kids who were in our elementary gifted cohort.

now swanson is apparently undergoing with fights, vandelism in the bathrooms, some kid running around with a taser? and i'm sure the teachers are 100% focused on catching the kids up and readying for SOLs, rather than ensuring children who are on track are engaged and actually spending the day learning.  its just a numbers and incentive game; though they may enjoy teaching the interested kids, there are no rewards for pushing them further than required by the standards, but there are penalities if the kids who are struggling don't improve on the SOLs, and there are many more of those struggling students these days. on top of that, APS is going to standards based learning: no grades, re-take tests, continue no homework.

we had planned to return for IB at WL, but once we started digging into it, we realized IB starts at 11th grade, and basically 9th and 10th will be just like our experience in swanson.  except the school will now be nearly 3000 kids because they built an addition on the 2000 student school, and even though no high schools were still over crowded after the great exodus, they are still moving over 200 kids/year for the next 3 years to justify spending $30M converting office space to classrooms.  so they are making WL an unreasonable size, and the differentiation and rigor we were hoping would finally be starting got kicked down the road until 11th grade.
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as for cost, here's how we see it: we are going private for mostly high school (other kids are different and I think will be okay at Swanson as long as the disturbances subside), so $60k * 4 * 3 -> $720k.  Let's say we just bought a house $720k more than our $1.2M house --  $[b]1.92M that would not get a similar 4 bedroom SFH in any highly ranked close in FCPS or MCPS high school, even before you consider additional interest costs.  House prices have gone up that much, its insane.  I wish we had moved to McLean 10 years ago[/b], we thought that APS would be a good school district, but realize now that parents are happy here because anyone who is concerned for academic rigor leaves for  FCPS early, despite the longer commutes.  APS parents are just way more chill, for better or for worse, but doesn't fit our family.[/quote]

Real estate agent here. Yes prices have gone up, but there’s 4+ bedroom homes on the market this moment in McLean for less than $1.92. If that’s your measure, you are fine. [/quote]

I see two houses on incredibly busy roads and a super shady flip.  That's it.  Just a different bad investment than private school.[/quote]

You just don’t want to see options. No idea what your criteria are, but there are *many* great options that aren’t flips or on busy streets, and even more if you include Vienna, West Falls Church, Merrifield, and Arlington.

You very clearly are willing to make no compromises and are only looking for someone to take your side in a disagreement with your spouse in which you are clearly wrong. 
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