The Beauvoir School is one of the most elite schools in DC. It feeds into the National Cathedral School and St. Albans. They had a child molester on their faculty:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/eric-toth-accused-of-child-pornography-evaded-authorities-for-5-years/2013/05/05/02813d9a-ae8f-11e2-a986-eec837b1888b_story.html

Private school is not a protection against child molesters.

OP, you obviously know that private school is the issue here. It is the one thing you can do something about- the IRS isn't going anywhere- so do something about it. Be angry, be sad, but do something about it. Or, figure out what it would cost to break your lease and move to another district.

If you really won't send your child to the local public school, start researching the Montgomery County school transfer policy. It is possible to transfer your children to another public school in the county but you'll need a reason other than not liking the principal and teacher at the assigned school. I know several people who have gotten transfers so their children could take a bus after school to their long-time babysitter or a grandparent. I went through a couple level of appeals, but I got my child transferred from one elementary school to another. (My child was attending our home school and it wasn't working out.) There are also language immersion programs at the elementary school level that have a lottery for enrollment, although I think to transfer into those programs after grade 1 the student needs to have some background in the language.

If you must send your child to private school, what about Catholic school? You do not have to be Catholic to send your child to a Catholic school and they are generally less expensive than other private schools.

You're not doing your child any favors if you end up in depth and unable to help her with college and other expenses as she gets older. Really, the most important thing is the individual teacher. Can you try the school and see if you like the teacher your child gets? It's a lot easier to transfer classrooms than schools.

I understand why you really want your daughter in private but you can't afford it. There is no other solution to your problem unless you can break your lease and move somewhere else. The reason people are focused on public school is because that's the root of your financial issues.

Private school is for rich people . You cannot afford it.

I think I already mentioned we toured the school because we know that kind of thing can happen anywhere and were no comfortable with the leadership we met with, the class sizes, the test scores, and the overall depressive state of the teaching staff there.

I think some of you are just barreling down the public v. private preach road and not actually looking at what is being said.

Oh, OP. Molesting teachers are not common, but they do reside everywhere--including private. It has nothing to do with private/public. See here for one example:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/magazine/the-horace-mann-schools-secret-history-of-sexual-abuse.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Pull your kids out of private school.

That's not a proper way to handle life's predators and to teach your children what to do. Private school is great, but "I'm trying to keep my kids from getting molested" must be one of the less-defensible reasons to go private.

Anonymous wrote:Pull your daughter out of private school.

This

PP: Yes but then we HAVE to put her in a school that felt off to both of us and has a history of teachers with reprehensible behavior (one that choked a student, now the molestation...).

Are we supposed to put her in a school that we are in no way comfortable with?

And he was just very flippant about the whole thing and made it clear to us that the teacher has supporters too (this was before the teacher admitted guilt and was sentenced). And went further saying he had no idea how it could have happened because they have classroom floaters and the teachers weren't left alone with students for tat long. Yet in every classroom we went into we never saw more than one adult and stayed in the 1 st grade class for about 30 minutes which seems to me enough unsupervised time to have something happen.

2 year lease, in the overall picture of thing, that is not a long time. You should be spending your energy researching where/which public school you are going to move when your lease ends - or before depending on the penalty for breaking your lease (less cost than private school tuition to break your lease?)

omg go PUBLIC!!! it may not be ideal but people who "drown" over ELEMENTARY school tuition are practicing such poor life management.

You need to cut private school for at least two years.

Pull your daughter out of private school.

How was the principal self-righteous?

My husband and I moved to Rockville, MD and the school we were zoned for (child is in 1st grade) recently had a teacher arrested for molesting several students and when we toured the school (thinking -- that kind of thing can happen anywhere) we found the principal to be a bit self righteous about the whole thing, the classes overcrowded, and the teachers seemed overextended.

We enrolled our daughter in a private school in MD as a result.

We have acquired (I won't go too much into the specifics) about $35,000 in debt some of which is owed to the IRS and make modest salaries by what seems to be the area standards ($75,000/year each).

I don't want to send her to the school we are zoned for but we cannot save a dime on our current payment structure. I have applied for every second job under the sun and my husband actually got a second job but they haven't been able to give him many hours.

Our families aren't in a place to help (well, my in laws are but they won't help and are weird about money) and I am in a dead panic every time a bill arrives or my phone rings.

We are locked in a 2 year lease. Someone please tell me what to do. I am scared and overwhelmed.