Anonymous wrote:Give OP some credit. Can you really claim that most families at independent schools don't make way more than $250,000? OK, there is 40% that receives financial aid. But do you really think that the other 60% make $250,000? In my experience, most families at my DS's school make WAY more than that, judging by their vacation destinations.
This. OP is talking about the barbell effect in private school incomes, where there are a lot getting FA and a lot of really rich families and not so many in the middle. I don't want to minimize the culture shock for FA families, which is bigger, but it's also there to some extent for the families in the middle. Well, anytime your kid is with much richer kids all day, and they aren't mature enough to ignore the other families' great vacations, there's going to be an element of that.
We were that family in private elementary school. Lots and lots of families made way more than us. Many families also had SAHMs who did all the PTA stuff that I couldn't do because it was scheduled in the middle of the day and the school was miles from my work. My kids didn't notice a lot of differences, but they did point out once that we were the second-to-last in the class to take our kids to Europe, when they were in fifth and second grades.