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[quote=Anonymous]I'm following this conversation because our family is at a juncture where our oldest DC (out of 3 kids) will be starting HS this Fall. ( We are wondering if we should continue through private school or switch to public HS. )

To answer your question, it was worth it for our family so far for grades K-8. We have three children currently attending K-8 private school. Our HHI was about $150K when we first decided to enroll our oldest (and those years were tough because the other two were in daycare and preschool), but by the time our oldest reached 8th grade, we've increased our HHI to $430K. Our key reason back at the beginning to enroll in private when we were more financially strapped was the religious aspect. We felt instruction of the faith outside of the home was important, and it could help with character-building by surrounding ourselves with other families wanting to serve the community. Now that our kids have the core foundation of these values/character/beliefs, the argument to continue into private high school (and at much higher costs) is harder to justify, even though we have more money now.

Overall, we consider it worth it so far of the community (our kids made good lifelong friends, and we love the families we've gotten close with through the school community activities). The biggest reason we think it is worth it is how our kids are as people. They are respectful, confident, independent, and generally make good decisions by doing the right/moral thing most of the time (they are still kids after all).

Looking back, I do wonder if our kids could have capitalized more on the resources that public schools can offer if they went to our local public school. For example, my 8th grader is into STEM, but given the small school, DC only progressed as far as Geometry in math as it is the most advanced subject available in a small school, and there were limited clubs/electives unless we looked outside. We did have to supplement here and there (e.g., the school didn't offer martial arts, so we enrolled the kids in martial arts for a period). But really, Another example - my other DC wanted to be in an orchestra but had to look outside of school because the school was too small to have its own orchestra. However, its pretty immeasurable knowing my kids have good friends, are kindhearted, confident yet humble, are grounded in their faith, and are also respectful/appreciative to family. There are other little things like our kids having good penmanship and cursive, being polite, being conscientious, they aren’t into appearances/social media, etc… I do attribute this to having a smaller close-knit environment that doesn’t care about these things and also to having caring teachers who can attend to each individual student and remind them of their manners and values.

As a side note – my husband never went to private school and turned out fine (and he earns more than I do). Because of this, we often compare notes as our kids progressed through the school years, and he’s been overall happy with our decision thus far. That said, I want to note some of the differences he observed over the years: 1) there had been no bullying or persistent behavioral issues in our school but there were in his. We might have run into 1 or 2 cases where there was trouble at our kids' school (across the 3 kids’ classes), but these issues do not persist because the teachers and principal work with the family and/or recommend the student leave the school if the kid is being terrible. 2) Our kids held onto innocence longer and have no awareness of making an online presence/façade, which we think is overall a good thing given the easy access to explicit material everywhere; 3) even though we have middle schoolers, there isn’t any boyfriend/girlfriend/sexual drama interfering with education, and 4) we experienced a lot of flexibility to adjust the school curriculum based on current needs (which was important for us during the COVID-19 pandemic given the nature of private school not having to deal with bureaucratic hurdles.) These benefits might be unique to our family, but I did want to highlight some intangibles in case these things matter to some of you reading this!

Overall, yes it was worth it to us because we feel that the school has helped us raised good people. I also want to say that getting 3 kids through private school was manageable/do-able, while still saving for retirement, 529, HSA, etc., but we don't have fancy cars, we opted for mostly domestic trips over international trips (at least in the earlier years), had simple parties, and we gave modest (but thoughtful!) Christmas/birthday gifts over expensive gifts to our friends. We do live in the suburbs (not the city), but it is a decent size (3100 square feet), and we did not get financial aid (unless you count discounted tuition for being a parishioner).
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