Future Proofing Your Children: The Public School Debate

You’re married with 2.5 children living on nice street in a well-developed part of the city.  Your two school-aged children attend the neighborhood public school elementary school (the 0.5 is still percolating).

The schools are good.  Good enough at least.  You don’t live in the wealthiest part of town, so the school system isn’t overflowing with money, but it isn’t impoverished.

The class ratios are larger than you would like — usually over 20 kids in a class, sometimes 25 or more.  There are after school activities, but not many.  There are some extra resources for kids with learning disorders, but the therapists are stretched a little thin.  Your son with autism spectrum disorder receives therapy twice a month, and you pay for extra therapy on your own.  Despite the high cost, it really seems to help so you keep paying for it no matter what else is going on financially.

There is a program for “gifted” children but sometimes it just means extra worksheets, because they need another staff member.  Your child is in the program — you currently pay for Kumon classes and do tutoring at home to keep her engaged.

There is bus service that is mostly reliable, but funding is limited so if you live within 3 miles of school you are not eligible to use it.  Since you intentionally bought a home close to the school, your kids cannot use the bus.  You’re just far enough away that you can’t easily walk there, so you end up having to arrange carpools for drop-off and pickup.

You are unhappy with the setup and want some change.

This is the latest in the Future Proofing Your Children series.  Find all of them here:

Scenario 1:

It just so happens the city is going to put a property tax increase on the ballot — all proceeds will go directly to the school system.

The money will pay for the following:

• Increase number of teachers to increase teacher:student ratio (1:20 instead of 1:25) along with creation of new classrooms
• Expanded radius for bus service — you are unsure if your home will be on the new bus route
• New playground equipment
• More therapy for children with disabilities — once/week
• No change to the gifted program

Many of the families in the district that currently pay for local Catholic schools plan to start enrolling their children in the public schools if the tax passes.

Scenario 2:

You consider moving south to a neighborhood with higher rated schools (according to Niche.com the elementary school is #3 in the state and Greatschools says it’s a 9!).

• They offer more in-school and out-of-school therapy, and the gifted program has more services
• The home prices are 25% higher, as are the property taxes.  If you move you would stop all private therapy/tutoring services, but your budget would still be squeezed
• The teachers are better paid than your current school district (even if the tax is passed) — they have a high retention rate and often can recruit great new teachers when needed
• You would not be able to afford a home walking distance to the school, but you would be on the bus route
• The neighborhood is gentrified; compared to your current neighborhood there would be mostly upper-middle class or lower-upper class individuals
• It would be further from work, but manageable

Scenario 3:

You pay for private school for both children.  There is a phenomenal school only a couple of miles from your house.  Many of your senior colleagues have sent their children there — they rave about every aspect of the school.  They tell you that the only way to ensure your children are set up for the future is to send your kid to the best possible school.  For those that go through high-school, 100% attend college (75% in your current school, and 90% in the more expensive public school).

• The tuition is high — really high.  You would have to cut back a little on retirement savings and/or college savings to afford it and even then it would stretch your budget
• They offer in-school therapy for your son, obviating the need for a private therapist; you would still get free therapy through the current school district.  They have an excellent track record providing the latest educational initiatives for children with autism
• They don’t have a gifted program, but have such small classes sizes they can individualized lesson plans for each student, and offer unique experiences that neither public school could match (class trips out-of-town subsidized by the tuition, guest speakers from around the country and world, and individualized college counseling)
• There is no bus/transportation service and you would have no one with which to carpool
• While many students come from wealthy families, the school provides scholarships to many low-income students from different parts of the city and suburbs
• All the students have to meet some admission standard, so while there is “diversity”, it is selectively diverse

If you use the private school you would still potentially be paying higher property taxes in your current school district, if the ballot measure passes.

Door #1, #2, or #3?

Do you vote for the tax increase?  Send to private school and vote against the tax increase?  Or just “sell out” and move to the suburb?

Door #3 seems to maximize the short-term opportunities for your children.  The long-term benefit of those opportunities are not clear, but you do worry what will happen with your son when he’s older.

Your “gifted” daughter seems a little bored and isn’t very engaged in her work at school — no matter what, she needs more challenges.

This is not our scenario (we do not have a child with autism; and as regular readers know, only boys in our house), but we’ve been through many similar discussions.

Door #3

I’m a product of private elementary and middle/high schools — choices my parents made based on their desire to ensure I received the best possible education.  I received a phenomenal education from a school that has produced many high-achievers (and also me).    My academic and non-academic high-school experiences still help me to this day, and I have life-long friends from those times, pretty much all of whom are doing well.  It offered just about everything that a private school in the Midwest could offer.

The cost was borne by my parents, but in part a reaction to that, I chose to attend State U and State U Med School.  At those schools I met mostly public school educated individuals, many of whom were far more intelligent and accomplished and well-rounded than me. I made many life-long friends, and many are successful in their chosen paths.

Tuition at my high school was higher than my undergraduate tuition.  The school has become even more fancy since I left — driving by now, it looks like a private university.

Door #1

My wife and I lived in the city for 6 years in a house purchased during my fellowship.  Rogue One spent Kindergarten and 1st grade at a free charter school — a Spanish language immersion school.  It was in a converted warehouse and was right off the interstate.  It was a full immersion experience — 90-100% Spanish only from Day 1, even in Kindergarten.  Learn everything in Spanish, including math, science, etc.  English was not taught until later, and doing worksheets/reading in English was homework.

It drew students from every part of the city and even some from the suburbs.  Unfortunately it had almost no resources, struggled to get playground equipment, had a hard time hiring teachers (and had a billboard visible from the mini-playground advertising alcohol).  It offered some after school activities but not many.  They had issues with discipline and communication .

Once, driving home from this school I literally was caught in a police chase — I was one street away and in sight of the school, going 20mph, when a car flew by me from behind and passed me on a one-lane road.  As I slowed down, someone jumped out from behind a parked SUV and through something silver into the street: it was a police officer throwing out spikes to blow the tires on the car that was passing me.

I only missed them because I had pulled over a little due to the speeding car, and the speeding car dodged them and kept going.  The policeman jumped into the back of the SUV, which tore off after him.  Suddenly three more police cars came flying by me, all in pursuit.  

Completely flabbergasted, I sat there — with two kids in the backseat — until I processed what happened.

The school is only 3 blocks from my where I work — a world-class private medical school and medical center in the trendiest and most expensive parts of the city.  Go just a few blocks away and it’s a different world.

Many students that go all the way through elementary are fully fluent in Spanish, and still know math, science, and English quite well.  I was gung-ho on this school because of the language possibilities.  By end of first grade, Rogue One was reading Spanish at a second grade-level (and also reading in English).  We knew he could do better in terms of raw knowledge because he was learning Spanish while he learned math, science, etc, but we wanted to give it a try.

He had some focus issues that kept him from being the best possible student he could be, but he was overall doing fine.

Door #2

With the arrival of Rogue Three, we really needed a bigger house (we had two functional bedrooms and 5 people to house).  We decided to relocate out of the city entirely.  We were not sure Rogue One was a good long-term fit for the Spanish school, we were also worried it would be a poor fit for Rogue Two once he was school age, and staying in the city meant we would likely need to pay for private middle or high school at some point.

Private schools (non-religious ones) are ridiculously expensive — $18k for Kindergarten (cheap by coastal standards, expensive to us Midwesterners) — so we moved to a suburb.

We bought the nicer/bigger house in the highly rated school district.  That just happened to have a property tax increase pop up right after we arrived to better fund the schools.

The school district was already incredibly popular, and it’s become even more popular the past two years, to the point class sizes are creeping up.

Rogue One is in his third year of school there, and Rogue Two starts Kindergarten next year.    It does not offer language classes in elementary.  Losing the language and cultural immersion is my biggest regret; the Spanish school also offered more diversity compared to where we are now because it drew from so many parts of town.

Where we are now is not perfect, but it’s pretty darn good and perhaps “better” in most measurable ways.

Nothing is guaranteed — the kids have to work hard and learn, and we have to make sure they are putting in their best effort.  Motivating Rogue One to pay attention in class is as much of a challenge now as it was in his old school (changing the language didn’t make him less prone to goofing off).

The Powerball Question

If cost was no object — if you won Powerball — what would you do? I believe many people (more than 50%) would be inclined to pay for Door #3 — private school.

If cost was a consideration, I think almost all the rest would do Door #2.

I know these things are not universally true.

I know people who can afford private school and choose not to use it.  There are philosophical reasons against private school.  Some consider the cost obscene regardless of their own income.  Some put immense value on the less sheltered environment of a regular public school and simply believe in publicly funded education.

I also know people with philosophical objections to public school — they do not want the government interfering in their children’s education, and will pay for private school even if stretches their budget and to ensure their children are taught in a specific setting.

What would I do?

My best guess — we would keep our kids where they are, I would keep telling Rogue One to listen to his teachers, and I would squirrel away some of that money for college.  The rest would go to getting one of those newer Honda Odyssey’s with a built-in vacuum, because our current Odyssey is disgusting.

However the next drawing for Powerball is tomorrow, so I’ll let you for sure in a few days.