Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Thank you for sharing your experiences. We are in the process of deciding between public or SN private. SN private would probably do a better job of meeting DC's current needs, but I'm worried about closing off opportunities in the future, should those opportunities be appropriate.

You're welcome and I hope it's useful. I do want to be clear, though -- I am not for a moment regretting our decision to go SN. Those years provided absolutely invaluable developmental help to our DC. What I'm offering is just a frank appraisal of what we found to be a downside -- the difficulty of completing the post-SN transition to the desired mainstream track.

Doing it all over again, I'm not sure we'd have done it any differently. I think if I could replay the tape, I'd have tried to make the leap one year earlier, coming into 1st rather than 2nd. But on the other hand, our DC made a great friend that last year at the old school. I do know that if we'd waited one year longer we'd have had real problems. 3rd grade really accelerates the academic work, and 2nd was really the absolute latest that we could have made the transition relatively easily.

And obviously, doing it all over again, we wouldn't have wasted our time with closed-minded schools.

Anyway, please understand I'm not arguing that you should opt against the SN track. I just want you to be prepared for all the subsequent contingencies.

Good luck!!!

Anonymous wrote:
Thank you for sharing your experiences. We are in the process of deciding between public or SN private. SN private would probably do a better job of meeting DC's current needs, but I'm worried about closing off opportunities in the future, should those opportunities be appropriate.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate to be the buzzkill here but we found huge prejudice when trying to transition. We did the SN route from pre-K through 1 and our child did tremendously well and was clearly miles ahead of peers with respect to readiness to transition to a mainstream school. But when we interviewed at other private schools we had one hell of a time getting in, and got rejected at several.

In our case it worked out miraculously well -- one school looked past the SN background at our child's significant talents and potential (which included strong academic performance, various artistic talents, high achievement scores, and boundless positive enthusiasm). Child is now performing at the top of the class in a good mainstream school -- indeed, one far stronger than a couple that had given us rejections. A year and a half in, it's overwhelmingly clear that our child would have been one of the strongest students in any of the other schools we applied to, a lead performer in any mainstream class (we felt this already based on performance in extracurriculars but have had it proved in spades since moving over).

In retrospect I almost shudder with fear over how hard it might have been had we tried to make the transition at a later year. We found the anti-SN prejudice very powerful even coming out of first grade.

Plenty of kids without SN get rejected at private schools. Maybe your child had an off day visiting or maybe it just wasn't a good fit. You have no way of knowing if there was prejudice.

Fair enough, though we have a pretty good idea. Most of these never got to the visit stage. Our child is almost universally a teacher favorite at every camp, class and school attended. Strangely the rejections came from those who turned down sight unseen. So, true, no way to know for sure, but it seems a weird coincidence that the rejections came from the places looking at the school background and not at the child, while those who have worked with the child (often without knowledge of the SN background) have had only praise and an eagerness to work with again.

Given the child's subsequent success in school, we feel on pretty solid ground in discerning some prejudice. One school even attributed certain characteristics to our child based on the fact that others at DC's SN school had those issues, even though our child didn't. It was pretty clear they were projecting an image onto DC rather than showing a willingness to evaluate as an individual.

Btw, I should add to other anecdotes that support the prejudice theory:

1) Another child left our SN school a year earlier and had the same experience. Couldn't get into any of the schools they most wanted. Wound up making a desperation choice school, re-applied a year later -- and got in everywhere. Parent concluded, reasonably, that washing the SN label off the child was the primary reason for the different results.
2) Another family, based on our two experiences, redacted info from school applications, including SN background. Was able to dodge questions because had just moved, said new to area, and was just coming into K, so said no transcript. Was accepted where we hadn't been, although our child's challenges were significantly less.

Also, in our case, one of the schools had tentatively scheduled a visit for us. It was abruptly canceled and our application declined. In questioning after the fact, we learned that the head of school had called around to get general info on the SN school we were coming from, and the decision not to invite us for a visit was made that same day. So yes, it's impossible to know for sure, but it seems reasonable to hypothesize a fair amount of prejudice in the application process.

OK, and now you've got me remembering more details about this as I re-live it. One school said directly to us, "We're not a good next school after [the school you are coming from.] Try schools x, y, and z, and possibly apply to us if things go well there." They pretty much said directly to us that their thinking was a function of where we were coming from.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate to be the buzzkill here but we found huge prejudice when trying to transition. We did the SN route from pre-K through 1 and our child did tremendously well and was clearly miles ahead of peers with respect to readiness to transition to a mainstream school. But when we interviewed at other private schools we had one hell of a time getting in, and got rejected at several.

In our case it worked out miraculously well -- one school looked past the SN background at our child's significant talents and potential (which included strong academic performance, various artistic talents, high achievement scores, and boundless positive enthusiasm). Child is now performing at the top of the class in a good mainstream school -- indeed, one far stronger than a couple that had given us rejections. A year and a half in, it's overwhelmingly clear that our child would have been one of the strongest students in any of the other schools we applied to, a lead performer in any mainstream class (we felt this already based on performance in extracurriculars but have had it proved in spades since moving over).

In retrospect I almost shudder with fear over how hard it might have been had we tried to make the transition at a later year. We found the anti-SN prejudice very powerful even coming out of first grade.

Plenty of kids without SN get rejected at private schools. Maybe your child had an off day visiting or maybe it just wasn't a good fit. You have no way of knowing if there was prejudice.

Fair enough, though we have a pretty good idea. Most of these never got to the visit stage. Our child is almost universally a teacher favorite at every camp, class and school attended. Strangely the rejections came from those who turned down sight unseen. So, true, no way to know for sure, but it seems a weird coincidence that the rejections came from the places looking at the school background and not at the child, while those who have worked with the child (often without knowledge of the SN background) have had only praise and an eagerness to work with again.

Given the child's subsequent success in school, we feel on pretty solid ground in discerning some prejudice. One school even attributed certain characteristics to our child based on the fact that others at DC's SN school had those issues, even though our child didn't. It was pretty clear they were projecting an image onto DC rather than showing a willingness to evaluate as an individual.

Btw, I should add to other anecdotes that support the prejudice theory:

1) Another child left our SN school a year earlier and had the same experience. Couldn't get into any of the schools they most wanted. Wound up making a desperation choice school, re-applied a year later -- and got in everywhere. Parent concluded, reasonably, that washing the SN label off the child was the primary reason for the different results.
2) Another family, based on our two experiences, redacted info from school applications, including SN background. Was able to dodge questions because had just moved, said new to area, and was just coming into K, so said no transcript. Was accepted where we hadn't been, although our child's challenges were significantly less.

Also, in our case, one of the schools had tentatively scheduled a visit for us. It was abruptly canceled and our application declined. In questioning after the fact, we learned that the head of school had called around to get general info on the SN school we were coming from, and the decision not to invite us for a visit was made that same day. So yes, it's impossible to know for sure, but it seems reasonable to hypothesize a fair amount of prejudice in the application process.