Anonymous wrote:I’d be concerned if teachers children were generally not accepted or chose not to attend. Shows a lack of community.
PP here who have experienced 3 privates, 2 with good teacher aid and 1 without. The community is definitely impacted. Where teachers have their kids, there is much more understanding between teachers and parents. To me, this makes sense, since there is a large group of people who are both, who are able to share perspectives as both. There is very little animosity between teachers and parents.
At the same time, it can also get challenging because of how personal issues become. For example, if your child has conflict with the principal’s child and the principal is the boss or colleague or is genuinely friends with every school administrator, discussing that conflict can be challenging.
At one school, many of the faculty-parents recuse themselves from parent social events. This is highly understandable but also negatively impacts the class dynamic. There’s a whole group of kids for whom social events is literally work.
At another school, faculty-parents are integrated into a close-knit community. The benefits of the community is that it is close-knit. The downside is there is no privacy. Most schools have rules about child confidentiality, but these can be loosely interpreted for different reasons. Marital problems at home? At this school, everyone will know, whether the marriage is a faculty one or parent one.
Personally I prefer to have many faculty parents, because I think it’s best for kids when there’s very little fighting between teachers and parents, and when there’s a lot of shared understanding.