Re "because of finances" - not true. At least five families in a class of roughly 20 at one private pulled their kids from the private, in favor of public; this was recent. The privates in this region aren't in any respect stronger than the publics, and kids are pulled from private schools in this region all the time for pure quality reasons.

Anonymous wrote:OP - where do you live and why are considering a change? is it because your publics are superior?

I know a few people who have gone from private to public and it was always because of finances....it was hard for them at first (what will people say!!!), but about 6 months into the school year they realized that they were worried about nothing and actually wished they had made the switch sooner. Also, they were feeding into great MoCo schools, which helps.

My daughter switched from a private school to public in second grade. She was 'then new kid' in the class, and didn't know anyone, but since she started at the beginning of the year, there were one or two other kids in the same situation. Her class was even a class where the teacher had moved with the class from first to second grade, so the majority of the kids had been in class together the year before as well. She still made friends. She had no problems switching academically. She was up with everyone else and did really well.

We went back and forth on switching her to public school because she had been in the private (Catholic) school since preschool. However, the fact is that we aren't Catholic (so the religious training wasn't an issue for us since she gets that from our church) and they raised the tuition to a point that it seemed so strange to keep paying it when we live in Fairfax County, and even the worst schools are better than most of the best schools elsewhere.

Good luck with whatever you decide!

We moved here in the middle of our DD's kinder year. Because of her birthday (in Oct) FFX wouldn't let us enroll her to finish out the year. We sent her to a private school with a 17K price tag for the remainder of the school year. Although she did well, the school wasn't amazing...at least not 17K amazing. Yes she was getting religious studies and slightly smaller class size, but that wasn't enough to keep her there. We switched her to public school the following year and she has done amazing. We are still friends with some of the kids from her class at the private school and I don't see any difference in the children's education.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP - where do you live and why are considering a change? is it because your publics are superior?

I know a few people who have gone from private to public and it was always because of finances....it was hard for them at first (what will people say!!!), but about 6 months into the school year they realized that they were worried about nothing and actually wished they had made the switch sooner. Also, they were feeding into great MoCo schools, which helps.

We live in Alexandria. Our kids haven't started kindergarten yet. We are leaning towards starting private and maybe moving in the future before the kids hit junior high school.

We can afford it but it will hurt our retirement savings.

City of Alexandria or FFX cty portion of Alexandria?

Fairfax side.

The public school is fine and you don't really need to consider private.