Another option would be to look into Home schooling your child. My oldest niece was given an extra scholarship because she was home schooled.

I went to public school in Fresno in the late 80's and I survived. I sent my daughter to public school from k-12 (I had no say in the matter) here in Oregon and she's a great kid and is now a corporal in the Marines, but I can see how the public school system indoctrinates kids into liberal thinking. A lot has changed since we were kids.

Spiritual faith is VERY important to me. My daughter has no belief in GOD and I blame her mentally disturbed anti-GOD mother (my ex) and the public school system. Between her mother and the public school system, she grew up to be a very resentful teen lacking direction and confidence. She grew very cynical but developed a strong resolve to give everyone the middle finger, enlist and skip town. I was the one person that she could always depend on and our relationship is, and always has been, very solid. She knew that my time in The Marines changed me forever in a good way, so she sought the same changes.

Marine Corps Basic Training developed her confidence and self-esteem. It erased most of the garbage that she picked up here in the Portland area and she now thinks pretty clearly with motivation, confidence and focus.

My seven year old has been attending a small private christian K-12 school since pre-k and the difference is night and day! He's extremely caring and considerate, funny, confident and polite. He's obedient, likes to pray with us and everyone loves to be around him. His teachers constantly tell us what a great kid he is and we feel like more of a family than anything else. It's expensive, but worth every penny to me.

I like the lessons they teach, like using scriptures to help kids understand the need to apologize when they do something wrong and to forgive when they've been hurt. The teens that I see there are put together, polite, don't use foul language and actually hold the door open when a parent comes into the building.

Find a good school with a good review and just do it.

Tony.

quote:

Originally posted by Cobra21:
"Sure, I have added up the tuition cost for 3 boys to go their entire career at private school..."

Yes, but did you ever seriously consider spending that money on incredible after school programs, NatGeo Kids' expeditions, Air & Space Museum workshops, private tutors, etc.?

YOUR money is potentially far better spent "directly" on YOUR children with their lowly public school education.

Disclaimer: Four bright, well-adjusted college grads and/or post college degreed individuals in my immediate family (me, my lovely, and two young men) all products of a lowly public school education.

I think you may have misread my posts or is public school reading comprehension causing some trouble

I am a product of public school and my wife is a product of the public school our boys would be attending. I acknowledge the fact that good does/did come from public schools. A lot has changed. Our basis is solely upon the district we live in. As a product of public school I very much wanted my boys to go to public school but in recent years our district has been changing and not for the better much of it dealing with redistributing the kids. Busing kids from the under performing schools to the highest achieving schools and vice versa does not work. Sure your poorly performing schools have their numbers come up but the schools that perform at excellence are dragged down to mediocrity.
We had a huge redistricting debacle a little over 2 years ago. My oldest was only 6 months old at the time but I was at every public meeting in regard to the issue and stood up and spoke at every event.
The redistricting went thru, not nearly as bad as the original plan but still did not make a lot of sense. My kids would be bused past THREE higher achieving schools to go to the LOWEST achieving school in the district.
Then the realization that just shuffling kids around does not really do anything for overall performance so they implemented some new policies and these are just some highlights.

No teacher is to give a grade less than 50%. That is correct turn in no work at all and still get 50%.

Teachers can not dock points for assignments being turned in late.

Catch a kid plagerising work. They can't be punished or docked points they are given the chance to redo the work with no due date and no ramifications for their stealing.

The nonsense goes on.
Behavior issues are not allowed to be removed from classrooms and teachers must teach around these distractions all day everyday and eventually lose focus of those that want to be there and want to learn.
The schools no longer teach right from wrong, or help with any sort of moral compass.

The way I look at it is my boys are given the task of building a bridge. They are given wood, a handsaw, a hammer, and a rusty bucket of nails. Sure, I am confident with what I have taught them they can build a functioning bridge.
But we have the means to provide them a square, level, Power saw and drill, along with some better screws to build an even better bridge because they have better tools to do it with.

I would love to send our boys to public school and save a ton of money but I don't see that as the best option we can provide.
We love our home, our city, our friends, our jobs moving just to go to public school is not worth leaving all that.

We will still have the ability for our boys to do many of the programs you have highlighted.

quote:

Originally posted by WyoRobert:
Especially since your wife is a teacher, why not look into home schooling, comparing her lost income to the tuition might not be such a bad deal, and you have even more control over their learning and indoctrination.

Home schooling has it's place for some just not for us we have discussed it though. As for the lost income between the 2 it would not be even close. Having to switch to my employers healthcare for the 5 of us alone would likely equal close to private school not even including her hourly rate.
Plus it would be nearly impossible for her to keep up with her certifications and required yearly training for her to get back into the medical field years down the road. She loves what she does and is very good at it and she loves raising our boys and is even better at that so we are lucky she only works part time so she does get more days with the boys than work a week.

We sent my daughter thru private school and it was the best thing we ever did she is so far advanced over her public school friends it's not even close.

I went to private and public schools when I went.
I had a good education, but I had noticed how things were changing after I got out.

We sent our kids to private schools. The oldest had no interest in going to college although he was the brightest of the kids. The other three went to college. The youngest went to a private college and I think got the best education. It was the toughest of the colleges my kids went to, but he was prepared although he was not an A student.

All private schools are not equal though.

Depends on where you live I guess. Our local high school is fundamentally conservative and they are blessed with pretty much always passing school levies, makes a big difference.

As others have said, if you chose private school, it will get to be expensive, especially as they get older. We explored putting our son in private school once he completed 6th grade, and all 4 of our local options were $15-25k+ a year. We quickly decided to keep him in public school and take advantage of their dual enrollment program. He will be graduating this coming spring with his AS degree, and the only out of pocket cost were the books. So always re-evaluate your options as they get older.