Hey- I made an impression there. Good ol days.Quote:
Originally Posted by Buster Highmen
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Hey- I made an impression there. Good ol days.Quote:
Originally Posted by Buster Highmen
or not, ya know? Hard to say from here.Quote:
Originally Posted by yeahman
Great option as long as the kid can get in and the financial aspect isn't crippling. You also need to make sure you have enough finances to support the adolescent social life style that comes at a place like Eastlake. Tough being the poor kid at a place of wealth.Quote:
Originally Posted by Buster Highmen
Issaquah School District elementary schools have the Merlin program for advanced kids. No racial aspects. Match the score on the test and get in. All Merlin kids attend the same elementary regardless of where they live (though tied to the high school they would attend). Merlin starts in 3rd grade, I believe. I had a kid test into it, but we didn't do it since we had multiple kids in elementary and didn't want to move them all or deal with kids in different schools. He's graduating this year so my info is a bit out of date. Middle schools have advanced Math tracks (as well as other programs).Quote:
Originally Posted by carlh
Plus you are that much closer to the Pass... Just sayin.
a local hippie I know went to private school where he met Robert Kennedy junior, sez the bob had a connection to THE purest mescaline eva
I went to a private school where one teacher had to deal 48 kids in the same classroom all day long. A kid in my class kid that retired a few years ago as the Director of R&D at a Fortune 100 company. It's like a box of chocolates.
Yes it depends on the options, i.e. how good or bad is the public school and how much better are private alternatives. But the other variable is the kid, and that's a big one.
Idaho is cutting education funding (shocker) and our local elementary accelerated learning programs are getting "restructured," meaning they're cutting 3 out of 4 of the GATE program admins in the school district. Subsequently, there will be one GATE admin for four elementary schools and teachers will be expected to administer additional items to their regular curriculum to kids who qualify , on top of running their normal classroom with less resources due to budget constraints. Thus, the public option is becoming less attractive because our kid does best when she's challenged and that's effectively going away. We're now evaluating the private options here as she would seemingly thrive in a more elastic, intimate learning environment that our public school can't be expected to provide.
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In VT when our kids were that age, Pre-K was all private and wasn't considered school, so I assumed you meant HS or something. At that age, convenience is worth a lot. The real question is, do you plan to do private school the whole way through?Quote:
Originally Posted by Mazderati
Works both ways.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cisco Kid
I went to public schools and a guy in my class became a legit billionaire by age 40. He built a huge place in the Yellowstone Club and he used to invite me over for skiing all the time.
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Not a bad idea. If I was in admissions and knew someone really wanted to attend, it would be a factor in my decision making given all else reasonably equal. I think that is all it is.Quote:
Originally Posted by ::: :::
We would apply for K anyway and figured why not start now. The school pre-K to grade 12 and continuity is part of the appeal.Quote:
Originally Posted by riser4
A guy a year ahead of me in the public schools I went to 1-12 is a billionaire. I never knew him very well. Small town kid with drive and ambition in a decent school system did well for himself.Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry
So that's what that dent was.Quote:
Originally Posted by CascadeLuke
And you're making sure to act and vote in line with your displeasure on this, right? Schools often transcend politics when people fuck with them enough.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Reverend Floater
Look at / compare the curriculum at each grade level. We started in public - in a district that overall is crap (the district, board and the union all work together like Larry, Moe & Curley), but had a few gems in terms of individual schools. After a few years of teaching to the lowest common denominator, dealing with some teachers that are not qualified to work at Starbucks (let alone teach young kids) and poor resources for kids/parents that are on cruise control and need more challenges, we went private / parochial. The curriculum gap was almost two full years. It took my kids six months to catch up, but they did.
YRMV.
PS: recalling my final straw was when one of my kids came home from (public) school (just at the beginning of COVID) and was telling me that Bill Gates started COVID so he could profit from the vaccine. I was a bit surprised to hear this so I asked him where he heard that, he said his teacher 'covered that in class today.' I told the principal & district and they did nothing. Not even a warning. Union town. Union rules.
Good discussion, we’ve got some proper parents up in here. Regarding the Seattle area schools- burbs will do ya better. Eastlake is a mountain top these days but there are several great options in Lake WA SD, Northshore, Issaquah, and Bellevue if you’ve got it like that.
There used to be style points for living in the cool neighborhood pockets of Seattle but that status has recently devalued like NFTs.
I couldn’t swing Eastlake / Sammamish real estate prices if I located there now. However the student body is mostly all offspring of highly successful people - you do the math.
Really wish I took better advantage of my opportunity there instead of chasing girls and partying.
Esseff - I think my daughter was in that same class
Quote:
Originally Posted by schuss
As far as statewide elections one can vote till your BLUE in the face in Idaho and you're just wasting your time. The only "real" input is to become a Republican and vote for the least extreme candidate available in the closed primary.
Yeah, no way I could live out here if I didn't buy in 20yrs ago. All the schools out on the Eastside will be good.Quote:
Originally Posted by CascadeLuke
When a teacher told the class that, by her definition, my wife's father was going to hell and my MIL found out she rode her bike directly to the school and had a sit down with the teacher. Anybody here ever think of doing that? Good teaching moments for you and your kid.
That's partially what I mean. Schools are often heavily local in what influences them, so good chance of making a difference if you start mobilizing people as changing a shitstain for someone that sees schools as their ticket to reelection is a win.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hopeless Sinner
If you have kids, value their education, and live in a shitty enough SD to think about going private... have you thought about moving instead of dropping $15k-$20k/year on private school for the next 12 years?
This kindof strikes me as the same thing as spending $100k on fencing, walls, security system and guns to protect your house/family against crime... but not once thinking about just taking that 100k and moving to a nicer low crime area.
Teachers in great SDs arent really better than teachers in middling to bad districts... less beaten down/jaded maybe. The real difference is that great SDs have super involved parents that create a culture of success and prioritize academics. By that same token, i dont think its healthy for the pendulum to swing too far towards prioritizing grades and test scores at the expense of a well rounded, happy and healthy kid.
The district RF is in spends roughly double the state avg/pupil. It's not locals that are the issue and Idaho does have the money.Quote:
Originally Posted by schuss
We have a unique kid that thrived at a public elementary school. He's very athletic (bump skier, lacrosse and MTB Team), pretty good in school, but has had some physical issues when he was younger that maybe stunted his maturity a touch. As he rolled into 6th, 7th and 8th (at the same school) we saw him losing interest, coming home sad and disinterested and just overall unhappy. My wife and I thought we'd just power through and get him through the 8th grade so he could get to the local high school and hope things would change for the better. In November of his 8th grade year he asked if we could tour one of the two local private schools. It's known as the "hippie" school locally, but really it's just a Waldorf spinoff 6-12th grade outdoor based school. All three of us loved it at first sight and moved him over mid-year.
Fast forward and he's just past 1 year there and he's thriving. Small classes, intimate teachers and constantly outdoors. Never in a million years did I think I'd send my kid to a private school, but in my opinion, certain kids will just fit into an alternative learning environment and some can just cruise through a traditional high school and be just fine. I think my kiddo would have been eaten alive at the local high school and instead he's loving school while chasing his mogul dreams! Long story short, I think it's a kid by kid decision and hopefully you have options where you live. When I was growing up in Bend, it was one high school or the other. Take your pick...
Good privates are $30-40k here hence the school district conversation.
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Originally Posted by californiagrown
That would be in the super low quality San Francisco United School District. The school was Alamo - a pretty good school all things considered. A district so bad they have refused to teach 8th graders beginning algebra. Now, after public shaming and pressure, they were forced to create a 'study group' this year on how to incorporate it into their curriculum. All this after refusing for decades as its 'too hard' aka the majority of our students will fail and we'll lose out on some funding.Quote:
Originally Posted by mcski
And yes, I'm sure you are shocked a town like this has a school with the war-mongering, violent name of 'Alamo' and it has not yet been changed to Daisy Elementary or Frida Kahlo school.
Esseff- well there still hope for replacing that warmonger name. The renaming nonsense wasn’t dropped completely just tabled indefinitely. Mine was at Balboa. And that was the health teacher there lol. You can only laugh at some point. Our elementary was great and we’ve had great teachers along the way but I found that if the kid has some self motivation it works out fine. If they don’t. They’re screwed
Oh, so shitty retirees or maleducated people who don't believe in them there school learnin'?Quote:
Originally Posted by Hopeless Sinner
Homeschoolers who dont want taxes, and who dont want the gubbmint brainwashing their kids.Quote:
Originally Posted by schuss
Quote:
Originally Posted by schuss
It never used to be that way, but it is now. Public colleges were free back in the day. Those type of folks are flocking here now, trying to get away from the libs.
I'm so sorry.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hopeless Sinner
We fit that description, right?Quote:
Originally Posted by californiagrown
Hopeless is right. My wife got all fired up and went to a district meeting. She said it was an echo chamber. Everyone here values education and are willing to pay higher taxes for it and the district gets it. Unfortunately, Idaho as a whole is one of the dumbest states and hellbent on winning the world cup of stupid.
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This city needs more charters to make SFUSD compete for kids. Unfortunately the district and union think the state funding per head is ‘their’ money. Space for charters is hard to find and the city won’t lift a finger to help a charter as they back the teachers union and district.Quote:
Originally Posted by mcski
I grew up in a strong public school district, then as a result of that strong district, was able to get a scholarship to go to an even better private high school. I came from a blue collar family that managed to swing buying the crappiest house in that school district, and it paid off for me.
IME both have pros and cons. I really enjoyed the private school classroom environment, as well as the ability to explore topics to a much further extent than in a public setting. That said, the environment was pretty homogenous in private school. That mostly was a benefit, as every kid came from a household that valued education, and was willing to invest in that, and that pays dividends for students overall. On the flip side, even though they did not waste a single moment to shout how diverse they were, I found there to be almost none of it, because everyone, regardless of race or class, came from a personal household environment that was basically the same. Dual parent households. Strong work ethic. Do you homework. Study hard. Strive for the best college you can get into. At the end of the day, the value system we all grew up with was the same, and as a result, there wasn't a whole lot of diversity of thought when push came to shove.
Don't get me wrong, that is a value system that overall leads to pretty decent outcomes, but I also think it breeds a certain lack of perspective in a lot of ways. I think you see that problem manifest itself a lot in today's modern bifurcated society where people continually talk past each other because they have zero perception of the life experience of others.
^ nice post
I'll be looking at private high schools soon even though my son is only in first grade. We have him in one of the best public elementary schools in Sacramento. The public middle school is good as well. But a conversation with a high school health professional at my gym has me reconsider the Sacramento high schools. He said that half of the 600 graduating students at his high school don't get diplomas, that they receive a certificate of attendance. Of the 300 students getting diplomas, only 80 of them qualify for a 4 year university. The amount of behavioral problems the other students cause means there's no time to teach the curriculum. And when they go to hire teachers, they pass on the teacher with decades of experience for the college graduate with no experience as they only consider the starting salary to save $30K.
^^^ A lot can change in 8 years.
Like getting worse?
It can possibly get worse over time, but can also change for the better. Improvements can take longer to be effective.
But strong parent support networks (PTA/C) can make a huge difference fairly quickly. Change in board members and administrators can result in changes that take longer to see the effect. In California, there are some big picture problems where corrections are slowly being worked on from local through state gov levels like HS drop rates, chronic absenteeism, the growing number of those qualifying for special Ed, overall student emotional well being, and $$, which is very tied to those qualifying for special Ed. Hopefully, other states and local school govs are acknowledging the problems and ID’ing solutions.
You could be proactive by holding the boards feet to the fire.