Reply to Is it really as simple as "just go private for middle + high school"?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]No, it is not simple. You should do a real assessment of your finances and be honest with yourself about what year you can afford to start and begin applying in that year.

This will also force you to evaluate whether or not you can even afford the option at all.[/quote]

OP here. We have a HHI of $750k or higher (depending on bonuses and stock performance). Our current PITI is <$3k with a mortgage we could pay off tomorrow if we wanted to, but we don't because it's 3.5%. For us the money is there, we just have to decide if we want to spend it on private school for 2 kids or a mortgage on a new pricey house with a good in bounds. We're genuinely very torn. We love our DC public and aren't very competitive people, we just want our kids to be happy, well rounded, and reasonably challenged academically.

So it's less about whether the money is there and more about whether this is how we want to spend it. This thread has been really helpful though, so thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to reply. [/quote]

I truly don't understand why you would muck around with DCPS or public charters past like 3rd grade. I am also not a competitive person and I get not wanting to send kids to Big 3 type environments. But there are lots of private schools that have nurturing environments with strong academics and basically none of the random BS you find in even the best DCPS schools. I guess it's nice to send kids to a neighborhood school and to have friends in the neighborhood. So maybe you do that for PK and a couple years of elementary. But especially on CH people will start peeling off for private or charters like Latin or BASIS by late elementary anyway. So why wait for that to happen when it might impact your ability to get into the school you want -- just go.

This is not a know on DCPS but I just can't imagine rolling the dice in this way by waiting if you know that you're going to want private anyway and can definitely afford it. I also think you will quickly discover that neighborhood schools are overrated in DC as a source of friendship-- people are super transient anyway and the lottery means classmates might not even live nearby plus you would be surprised by how easy it is to maintain a neighborhood friendship while kids attend different schools.[/quote]

Well $45-55k is a lot of money even if you make $800k, so if you can get a good education for free, why not?

Also, everyone but the biggest rube knows that all elementary school education is basically the same. People like you are how private schools pay the bills for the upper school. Send your kid to Stoddert or key or Mann and they’ll get a better education than you can get paying for it anywhere in town. Sixth grade is a different story, but only a real donut would consider paying for any elementary.[/quote]

You can’t get a good education for free.  Elementary is actually very important and not all the same. The quality of peer families and teachers is quite important, among other things.[/quote]

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