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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Does anyone ever go on there to read the posts? When you see the issues discussed there, does that reaffirm your committment to private school?

Just went in the PS forum and right away I saw posts discussing my biggest concerns about public schools, overcrowding and quality control. One poster wrote how useless the Spanish class at her child's ES school is and another wrote that after 4 years of Spanish instruction in the school, the child knew nothing. I see many PS parents post here in the private school forum praising their schools and trashing private, but I have never until today ventured on to the public school forum of this blog. From what I read on there today, I am convinced that private is the best way to go at least until 8th grade. I am still not sure if private highschool is worth it so will continue researching and asking parents with older kids. My kids are in 3rd and 1st grade.

Out of curiosity and in light of the latest tuition hike (our school was hit with 4.5%), I have started to quietly look into public schools in our neighborhood in VA. My husband grew up around here, but I did not so I do not know much about the public schools in this area other than what he tells me, which is that they are all terrible and that this is a non-negotiable no discussion issue for him and he will send kids to private no matter what the cost. I went to private where I grew up so when the kids came along, I didn't know any better so I just went along with him, and I am ok with continuing with private until 8th grade, but these tuitions scare me to death. Our HHI is $220k, but we live in an inherited home so we have no mortgage. For the moment we are ok, but we are in professions in which we have reached the upper limit of earnings so while we are able to manage at the moment, I am not sure once tuition hits 40k per kid, if that is something we can do and my husband is not even open to discussing this possibility, which is scary for me as I am a total planner and worrier.[/quote]

OP, I was a private school student who planned to send my kids to private because I thought it automatically head and shoulders better than public.  Which it was where I grew up.  We send our kids to public in Arlington, which is different than Fairfax obviously but both counties share some of the same issues.  I'll address some of your concerns and thoughts:

Overcrowding:  Our neighborhood school is known for overcrowding.  There are trailers.  But my son has never been in a class with more than 22 kids.  The number of kids allowed in a class is capped, and my son's classes have never reached that cap.  The trailers are nice inside.  They are clean, quiet, and peaceful.  The bathrooms are much cleaner than the bathrooms in the main building.  Given a choice between the main building and the trailers at "our" school I would choose the trailers for my kids.

Quality control:  I'm not sure what your specific concerns are here, aside from Spanish.  My kids are getting an excellent education.  They receive gifted services in the appropriate subjects, and they are generally appropriately challenged.  We do get a tutor in writing for our son because it's not his strong suit and he benefits from one-on-one interaction there.  Between the school instruction and tutor we are very pleased with his writing skills.  Spanish is offered for each grade level at his school, but it is not a graded subject.  It is a twice a week class, the object of which is to give the students familiarity with the language.  It is nothing like an immersion level education, but the kids who receive it are funneled into a higher level class in middle school than those who have received no Spanish instruction.  There are Spanish immersion schools in our county for those who choose to go that route.

I'm not trying to dissuade you from private, just want to let you know that there are lots of people in the area who choose public even though they could afford private, but obviously not all schools are the same.  Our income is about 4x yours, and we would choose private in a heartbeat if we thought that our kids would do better in a private school than our assigned public schools.[/quote]

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