We switched our kid to a selective public for high school. I wasn't thrilled with many decisions being made by the private, kid wasn't thrilled with the school overall (small size is not always a good thing), and the public offers more sports and fun clubs. Add all that to the 50k+ pricetag and it just made sense to switch.

This is probably a dumb response as my first child is only entering PK3 this year but we did put thought into public vs. private and and this point did not feel the cost of private makes much sense. My son has been in a private preschool that we love but will transition to our inbounds ward 5 public for free pk3 this fall. Do we think staying at his current private preschool would be "better" for him? Yes, we do, for a number of reasons including that he is shy and reserved and risk averse and the private school is small and knows him well and the way they do things is working well for him. However, I do not think my kid needs to always have the best option available to him. He needs a good enough option, an option that will work for him. But he doesn't need the 100% best at all times. Certianly not when we are talking about paying 20-30k a year for a 3 year old. Good enough is good enough. If he runs into problems down the line and needs a different school, whether that is in 4th grade, middle school, high school, whatever, I would rather have saved that money now so its available then. He is seemingly nuerotypical so far, has two parents who care about him at home, and isn't experiencing poverty. We have no reason to think he won't do great in public school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Barring special needs, stick to public for elementary and go private in middle school. That’s when things start to get bad…

Aren't your options fairly limited at that point?

People always say that on DCUM, but it hasn’t been my experience with 5th graders leaving our Capitol Hill ES. No one got shut out of private MSes. Kids who are somewhat above average students (at a DCPS that this forum seems to think is on the edge of acceptability) got into super competitive privates. It may get harder for HS.

Good to hear this wasn't your experience.

Anonymous wrote:We toured two highly regarded private schools for HS. Also applied to highly regarded public schools. After the second tour, we discussed the private schools and realized that our student would not be happy at a private school. While there are things they loved, there were things they hated, and the payoff wasn't substantial enough for the financial sacrifice. We may have had different conversations if they didn't get into their top choice public HS.

Curious what those things were that tipped the scales?

Despite being able to afford private school, we didn't even try, due to our child being moderate special needs; the private schools are not inclusive for the most part and I didn't want to be in the situation of having my child removed from the school due to requiring more/different supports later on.

We toured two highly regarded private schools for HS. Also applied to highly regarded public schools. After the second tour, we discussed the private schools and realized that our student would not be happy at a private school. While there are things they loved, there were things they hated, and the payoff wasn't substantial enough for the financial sacrifice. We may have had different conversations if they didn't get into their top choice public HS.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Barring special needs, stick to public for elementary and go private in middle school. That’s when things start to get bad…

Aren't your options fairly limited at that point?

People always say that on DCUM, but it hasn’t been my experience with 5th graders leaving our Capitol Hill ES. No one got shut out of private MSes. Kids who are somewhat above average students (at a DCPS that this forum seems to think is on the edge of acceptability) got into super competitive privates. It may get harder for HS.

Anonymous wrote:Barring special needs, stick to public for elementary and go private in middle school. That’s when things start to get bad…

Aren't your options fairly limited at that point?

Our IB elementary school was high rated and we loved it when we toured it. Hardy Middle school and JR have been fine also.
My kids really don't need anything special like smaller class sizes or personal attention.
I wouldn't send them to private even if someone else paid for it. It just not for our family.
I went to magnet school abroad. I can tell my kids in two hours what I learned (and what I didn't learn) and what they need to know in order to do well in life.
We have the money in case the kids need support in college, want to change major, take longer to graduate, or go to trade school. They can also just sit at home and manage their investments.

Barring special needs, stick to public for elementary and go private in middle school. That’s when things start to get bad…

Not going to answer these questions as they are way too identifying, but I will say this:

I have two kids in elementary. One goes to private, one goes to public. The one in public goes to a "JKLM" school. We have been extremely happy with the public education in early elementary. While DC wants to join their sibling eventually at private, we are sort of pushing for them to stay through 5th (although we will take it one year at a time and respect their wishes if they want to go sooner). DC in public is thriving and very happy. It wouldn't have been as good a fit for our older child and so this answer is very child dependent. For us, cost is not an issue so we could send DC to private now but we are happy in the neighborhood public so don't feel the need.

From what I can tell so far, there hasn't been a huge difference in the early years between public and private, but we will definitely be gone by middle school. Most of our friends that left did so between 4-6 grades.

1. I don't think private school is worth it for elementary school for NT/smart kids who can thrive in a public environment. We could afford private in the sense of being able to pay the bills and keep our house, but it would be a real expense/hardship for us if we did it for all of our kids, so value for money matters a lot. There are some things private school is better at, there are other things that public school is better at. One is free. Given that our kids our thriving, there is no reason to revisit this decision at this stage.

2. Yes. We spend some of the money we would spend on private to supplement in more targeted ways (instruments, travel sports, ECs, personal travel). We would need to cut back on these things which I think are more helpful to our kids than private school with fewer of them would be. Again, for us the money is still meaningful/limited, so that aspect would be different for folks truly printing money (or with family willing to pay only for private).

3. Our IB DCPS on Capitol Hill.

4. We are not planning to switch for MS (which is imminent). HS may be a different story. As of now, we will go private if Walls doesn't work out, but obviously a lot can change.

I'm not going to asnwer all the really identifying questions, but we have the abilty to send our kids to private but are keeping them in public (for now -- middle school). some reasons:

i used to work in a private school, and while the amount of care of attention each kid gets is amazing, the kids always felt very sheltered and coddled to me. They are not used to the wider world and huddled together, they expected adults to guide them to opportunities (rather than seek them out themselves). That always made me hesistant about switching to

college results -- the public middle/high school that my kid is in actually has extremely good college results, and they help the kids secure scholarship money as well. We are just barely UMC (grandparents offered to pay for private), but would love for our kids to get scholarships, if possibe, and private school is less inclined to help with that. both kids are extremely good students with 99th percentile test scores, so i think they might actually get better college/scholarship results if they stay in public.

that said, i think about private all the time and wonder what my kids are missing by not going. I could always change my mind in a few years and try and send them for high school.

Not the demographic you're looking for, but want to say that as an education professional, this choice is pretty kid/family dependent, and not just on income.

Some of the top privates in DC - think Sidwell or Georgetown Day - aren't as well-equipped to handle kids with certain learning and thinking differences as a well-run public even in a system like DCPS. They know this and don't admit kids with severe ADHD, certain types of ASD, etc. Other privates in the area specifically cater to those students - think the River School.

Other kids benefit from the super rigor, structure, or small class sizes privates offer. Other kids thrive with the socio-economic and racial diversity of publics.

It depends on who your kid is and what your family's goals for education are. I want my kid to learn reading, math, social studies and science but also to be prepared to live in the wider world. I am willing to sacrifice some rigor for that second goal. Not all families feel that way, which is okay.

I appreciate that this post may annoy some, but I would still like to ask for guidance.

For families that could have afforded to send your kids to one of the DC area’s top private schools but elected not to, could I ask:

1) Why did you choose public?
2) Are you happy with your choice?
3) Which schools did you send your kids to?
4) Did you switch your kids to private for MS and HS, or did they stay public the whole time?

Grateful to hear from parents whose children are still in the school system and those whose kids are in college or newly graduated.