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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Ask yourself this - if you don't feel like you have much in common with the parents, how do you think your child feels?  Do you think she'll fit in/feel comfortable at the school?  If these people don't have the same values as you -- perhaps this isn't where your daughter should be. [/quote]

This +100.

We have financial aid kids in my children’s middle and elementary schools, and these are the hidden issues. There are just too many opportunities for awkward moments and faux pas events with these kids who MIGHT be cognitively “bright” but socially clueless and woefully lacking in emotional and cultural intelligence.

A couple of years ago my son thought he wanted to be friends with this boy in his class. He had a working-class nickname...let’s say it was “Spike” (or something of that ilk”.

My son invited “Spike” to his birthday party. The teacher strongly encouraged parents to invite all kids if invitations were distributed in school, and it was just easier to do so.

We had the party at the club, and Spike’s Mom, an overweight housekeeper at a Days Inn, went on and on about how touched they were and that they’d love to reciprocate and have my son over for KFC. I smiled and said my son has a specific diet that precludes a lot of dining options, and then excused myself to greet other guests.

Spike was one of those overly helpful kids, who doesn’t know what it means to be a guest and thinks somehow his “help” is needed to support the staff we members pay for in our dues  :roll: . I know it was just a reflection of his discomfort, but that’s exactly why he didn’t really belong in the school no matter how much his cognitive gifts made him a recipient of “aid”.

The end, though, was the kicker. The party is ending and parents, nannies and au pairs are picking up their kids. I don’t mind the domestic childcare people as they are all well-dressed and not doing this as a career. Princess Diana and Elim Nordegren would be dowdy in comparison to some of these sweet young things.

Then Spike’s Dad rolls up. Imagine what a man who names his son “Spike” looks like. Short. Stocky. Work clothes. Steel toed shoes with duct tape (!!!) holding the soles together. Patches on each knee, and another patch on his work jacket. Comes up and thanks me for hosting his son, and babbles about the opportunity his kid is getting that he never got—-forgetting of course that I’M PAYING for that opportunity. Nice.

So he takes Spike and says they “gotta” make one more stop on the way home. At 7:00 PM on a Saturday.
See. Spike, while telling me how the run of the mill club spread was the “BEST meal” he’d ever had, told me dessert sure beat the candy bars in his Dad’s
Vending machines.

That’s right. Spike’s Dad couldn’t get his job done and kept his kid out so he could “hit” one more set of machines.

I’m sure DCUM will get all huffy about how I talk about this boy Spike and his family. But I write this way so you can see just how huge the gulf is.
Spike no more belongs on scholarship in my children’s school than my children do at say Wakefield in Arlington or George Mason in Falls Church. He belongs where he can be a fish in a small pond, not a guppy in the Caribbean. He’s going to be humiliated Day after day as parents don’t let their kids visit his Section 8 apartment  in his “transitional” neighborhood, as coaches here ask how he can play basketball without attending camps. And sadly, as beautiful young women inevitably mock him as he clumsily tries to ask them out.

Spike is a sweet, sweet boy...but our school (and his naive parents) are doing him a huge disservice in pretending his natural intelligence and work ethic can somehow compensate for the demoralization that happens when you realize that despite it all, you just don’t belong. We need to get charter schools all throughout the country so the Spikes can find an alternative to public school hellholes without being thrown as malformed babies into an ocean where they will drown psychologically and emotionally.[/quote]

School is not a country club.  It's a place to learn, and Spike may be learning more at the private than he would in public.  Maybe Spike needs to be there despite the difference in wealth of other families - you don't know their circumstances.  If you are embarrassed to be seen at your party with parents who are blue collar, then you have issues.  It's a freaking birthday party for F sake.  [/quote]

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