re: Private school, yay or nay?

I grew up in public schools. The local private schools when I was a kid were run by the Catholic church and my parents would not have sent me even if they could have afforded it, which there was no way. I did OK I guess.

Here in north Mississippi we had one daughter go public all the way through and one who is a senior now in private who has been there since 8th grade.

Now the local county school was not bad at all. The elementary school grades 1-5 was excellent actually. And the school library even had books about the 12 apostles and Noah and the ark. I figured, the damn federal government must not even know this place exists. But in this school system once the kids got through 5th grade at the elementary, they never really had to work that hard again to graduate high school. They could if they wanted to, of course, but they just weren’t pushed that hard anymore. And, the area was becoming more fashionable for people to move into, and the enrollment was outgrowing facilities and no expansion was in sight.

We considered sending older daughter to private when I saw how lax the middle school was. She made straight As and I never saw her bring a book home. But she had lots of friends and was involved in sports and clubs and was happy where she was. Regularly makes the chancellor’s list in college now so I guess she did OK.

Younger daughter went through 7th grade there. But there was a particularly ugly, nasty, shitty little cohort of kids in her grade and both a year ahead and behind her. I mean, you could tell who they were gonna be even in 1st-2nd grade. As the years went on they became worse and worse. She kind of became more socially isolated and when these shits started giving her a hard time it was such a small school there was really no way for her to get away from them.

So we moved her to the local religion-based private school. It is good bit more academically rigourous than the county public school she started in. I was initially concerned about that. But younger daughter has held her own, not blowing everything away, but maintains a solid 90% academic average. Not bad for a dyslexic kid. She is more involved and happier than she was at public and has a little crew to hang out with, they are good kids from good families, so the move worked out well for her.

The school does have its small share of problem kids too, though, as I tell my daughter, they are just a slightly higher class of shitbags. And as someone else noted, they can indeed afford better drugs than at the county school. But the school does have a willingness to kick their asses out, so they do run them off when they cause too much trouble. I am pleased about that.

Overall I have been satisfied with the private school experience here, I was glad it was available when we wanted it. So the private option had been worth it for us.

TL;DR: private school worked well for us!