Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you're truly "middle class" you shouldn't be attending this school in the firs place.

Face it. Private school is for rich people, period. Don't believe anyone who tries to tell you otherwise.

+1.

This. The actual middle class in America doesn't send their kids to private school.

They do in other parts of the country. 40K+ for grade school is an up-East/California phenomenon. Are the schools substantially better? Maybe? No real way to compare. They're substantially better connected, for sure, and they are shinier (or ivy-er, whichever).

Again those are not middle class families. DCUM has a distorted belief of what is a middle class family. A family of 4 making 75k is not sending their child to a 40k private school. Unless they are recieving significant aid, which isn’t the point of the complaint on this thread...

In other parts of the country, i.e., the South and Midwest, you can go to the best private school in town for $10-12K (kindy) to less than $20K (9-12). I know this, because we are in Georgia right now, and I went to a similar school in Alabama. DH is military, and we are waiting to see if we'll move back to the DMV next year, where, obviously, we won't even consider private on our combined income of $200K.

FWIW, I (valedictorian) went to Berkeley, and the salutatorian went to Harvard. Other kids went to Princeton and SLACs. This was 1990, graduating class of 80 people. These days, plenty of kids going to state schools, especially now that they've all added full scholarships for their honors colleges, but large percentages of the class at the school here in GA and at my old school in AL are receiving acceptances to elite universities. Test scores are excellent, and the students do well when they get there. So whatever the 40K-a-year schools are doing, it's not educating kids better. I do believe they create better networks.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So I was doing a rough calculation just for fun.
Let's assume scenario 1 where your child enters 1st grade (7yo) and you pay $40K in tuition that increases 3.75% annually. By the time s/he graduates, you would have paid about $592K in tuition.

Let's assume scenario 2 where you don't send your child to private school and invest each year's tuition in the stock market. Let's assume the market returns 8% each year. By the time s/he graduates high school, you would have $906K. Now, let's assume you continue to invest that $906K with a return of 8% so that you have a retirement fund saved for your child. By the time your child is 65yo, s/he would have $33M. That's a lot of money. If the return on investment is a 10%, the amount at 65yo is a whopping $89M!

If you think giving your kids a boatload of money in addition to, or instead of sending your kids to a private school, then go for it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

In other parts of the country, i.e., the South and Midwest, you can go to the best private school in town for $10-12K (kindy) to less than $20K (9-12). I know this, because we are in Georgia right now, and I went to a similar school in Alabama. DH is military, and we are waiting to see if we'll move back to the DMV next year, where, obviously, we won't even consider private on our combined income of $200K.

FWIW, I (valedictorian) went to Berkeley, and the salutatorian went to Harvard. Other kids went to Princeton and SLACs. This was 1990, graduating class of 80 people. These days, plenty of kids going to state schools, especially now that they've all added full scholarships for their honors colleges, but large percentages of the class at the school here in GA and at my old school in AL are receiving acceptances to elite universities. Test scores are excellent, and the students do well when they get there. So whatever the 40K-a-year schools are doing, it's not educating kids better. I do believe they create better networks.

No offense, but the type of school you are describing is more a product of segregationist policies in the south.

Anonymous wrote:

In other parts of the country, i.e., the South and Midwest, you can go to the best private school in town for $10-12K (kindy) to less than $20K (9-12). I know this, because we are in Georgia right now, and I went to a similar school in Alabama. DH is military, and we are waiting to see if we'll move back to the DMV next year, where, obviously, we won't even consider private on our combined income of $200K.

FWIW, I (valedictorian) went to Berkeley, and the salutatorian went to Harvard. Other kids went to Princeton and SLACs. This was 1990, graduating class of 80 people. These days, plenty of kids going to state schools, especially now that they've all added full scholarships for their honors colleges, but large percentages of the class at the school here in GA and at my old school in AL are receiving acceptances to elite universities. Test scores are excellent, and the students do well when they get there. So whatever the 40K-a-year schools are doing, it's not educating kids better. I do believe they create better networks.

Anonymous wrote:I have not read the entire thread but some pages. Quite a few PP said something like "can't afford then leave". As a Sidwell parent, I feel this type of expression is harmful to the Sidwell community. When we selected Sidwell over other schools several years ago, one of the important factors was the welcome feeling at Sidwell.

Anonymous wrote:I have not read the entire thread but some pages. Quite a few PP said something like "can't afford then leave". As a Sidwell parent, I feel this type of expression is harmful to the Sidwell community. When we selected Sidwell over other schools several years ago, one of the important factors was the welcome feeling at Sidwell.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you're truly "middle class" you shouldn't be attending this school in the firs place.

Face it. Private school is for rich people, period. Don't believe anyone who tries to tell you otherwise.

+1.

This. The actual middle class in America doesn't send their kids to private school.

They do in other parts of the country. 40K+ for grade school is an up-East/California phenomenon. Are the schools substantially better? Maybe? No real way to compare. They're substantially better connected, for sure, and they are shinier (or ivy-er, whichever).

Again those are not middle class families. DCUM has a distorted belief of what is a middle class family. A family of 4 making 75k is not sending their child to a 40k private school. Unless they are recieving significant aid, which isn’t the point of the complaint on this thread...

Anonymous wrote:In search of an academically rigorous and socially progressive school that doesn’t cater to the super wealthy ...

Anonymous wrote:one of my kids is in 10th grade at SFS, been there since 3rd grade.

My husband read this thread and he bought up this idea to me last night. We have three more kids that are currently in 6th, 4th and 3rd grade. Instead of spending 125k/year to send them to SFS, why not keep them in Fairfax County Public School (e.g. Churchill ES, Cooper MS and Langley HS)? We can use that 125k to hire the best private tutor in all subjects. I mean literary pay someone to come to our house and help them with their school work. That is a much better ROI in the long run, right?

suggestions?

Anonymous wrote:

One solution is to decrease the huge financial aid budget. Currently SFS has $7 million annual FA budget; 23% of students receive FA and the average FA award is $ 26900. Certain amount of FA is good and necessary to attain the talents and maintain a diversified student body. But such a large amount the school currently gives out is not necessary, in particular when many full pay hard working families are struggling with the increase. I thnks the teachers deserve to receive good benefits and an increase in salary, but many families on FA do not deserve. SFS should have no issue to maintain a good diversified student body with significant cut to the FA budget.[/quote

What accept students from sh@$hole countries, rather than from suburbs like Potomac?

Anonymous wrote:So I was doing a rough calculation just for fun.
Let's assume scenario 1 where your child enters 1st grade (7yo) and you pay $40K in tuition that increases 3.75% annually. By the time s/he graduates, you would have paid about $592K in tuition.

Let's assume scenario 2 where you don't send your child to private school and invest each year's tuition in the stock market. Let's assume the market returns 8% each year. By the time s/he graduates high school, you would have $906K. Now, let's assume you continue to invest that $906K with a return of 8% so that you have a retirement fund saved for your child. By the time your child is 65yo, s/he would have $33M. That's a lot of money. If the return on investment is a 10%, the amount at 65yo is a whopping $89M!