Reply to HHI of private school parents

Forum Index » Metropolitan New York City

Reply to "HHI of private school parents"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We were full-pay upper-six-figures people at a 2T middle school and felt *very* looked down upon - our kid (who had some experience with snobby rich kids from her previous school) was made to feel inferior by a bunch of her classmates and we ourselves felt like we were getting glared at on parents' night. Decidedly not worth it.

In retrospect, I think that if you're in my income bracket you should eschew any possibility of private until high school. Public middle schools are totally fine academically if you're in a good district - they'll learn all the math they need, and while they'll get a little less writing practice than a private school kid might, it won't take long to catch up in 9th grade, and at any rate the gap there is shrinking with the class size law giving teachers more time to grade writing assignments. And socially, it's a LOT easier on your kid to go to a relatively relaxed public middle school than to attend a private school during the 3 years when kids are at their absolute most awful.

Plus, frankly, it's a much easier transition for a public 8th grader to switch to private in 9th than it is for a private 8th grader to switch to public to attend a SHSAT school or LaGuardia, so you keep more options open that way. There are exactly zero private schools that can match up with what LAG offers for a talented arts kid, and only a handful of them can match up with Stuy/BxSci/HSMSE in STEM, so the best path forward for your kid could easily run through a public school.[/quote]

Are you the former Fieldston parent who has been posting a lot? Just curious.

We are high six figures with pretty good savings. Public K-8 then private. Fortunately can afford to do enough "big events" like ski trips and camp that our kid can keep up with the Joneses, though we feel very little pressure to do so. There definitely are some cliques of the SAHMs, but they are much more prevalent in younger grades than HS. My child is very involved in a few activities so we have gotten to know the parents of those kids fairly well and they range from huge generational wealth/very rich entrepreneurs to people with significantly less than us. No one seems to care too much, though occasionally things come up in conversation that make the differences obvious (I am more neurotic about such things than others). Because I am very humble, I actually kind of prefer being in this position to when my kid was in public school and we had to remind them to downplay things that were very normal to us (like camp and ski trips) so as not to appear like a rich show off.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics