Christie has the total kindergarten wrap-up.
The headlines: the school attached to Christie’s church has pulled into the lead, and we’re going to attempt to wrap up a real summary of how much private Catholic school is going to actually cost.
The details: there is public school, and there is private school. I imagine a lot of you are thinking “huh, free vs. a couple hundred bucks a week… doesn’t sound too hard”, and, for a lot of parents, that’s a fine way to look at it. After all, free isn’t free: you’ve paid for public education since your made your first $5.25 at Dairy Queen. Might as well get what you’ve been paying for.
But the public school where we live has five kindergarten classes. That seems like a lot to me. It has a surprisingly high percentage of non-English speakers, and my kids read. It’s not particularly close: the bus ride might be 10-12 minutes, by our calculations. And it would only be their school for three years – we’d have to reshuffle our routines in 2011 and make a whole new decision about “where are we going to 3rd grade?”
And the relationship with the local public school hasn’t been particularly warm. I trust my wife’s instinct on things like this – while we’re both the agents for our kids, it’s an uphill battle if you haven’t impressed her.
But there are more than enough reasons to do what we’re doing: as fledgling Catholics, they’re going to either be in a Catholic school or have a standing appointment every Wednesday night to get what they’re missing out on. If they can get that out of the way during the day, then we’re all set. Private school is going to offer them better access to technology, better access to music programming, more one-on-one attention, and easier access to pre- and post-school activities.
They have little groups of kids from all age ranges – K-8 – and that’s your buddy group. In my school experience, I never talked with people a grade above or below me. (And the kids that were two grades behind me are a special kind of awful.) But at private school, they’ll have the cross-grade groups that team up and go places together. And the kids, then, get to know everyone in the whole school.
I am still cogitating carefully about all this, but that might just be me dealing with the reality of it. (It’s going entirely too fast, honestly, but if we go at my speed, we’ll start kindergarten when they’re 11.) I don’t want to have a prejudice against public schools where I live, but I know the schools struggle. I think it’s selfish on some level to pull bright and talented kids out of public schools and put them into private schools – it doesn’t make the problems the schools face any easier, but I want the best for my kids. On that note, I find it incredibly strange that we’re a family that will comfortably handle private school tuition – that’s not how I grew up at all. And I’m slightly uncomfortable about the idea that the education my children will receive is going to be framed by the ideas of Jesus and Christianity and Catholicism.
I know my kids. They will both do their best learning and growing in an environment where there are real expectations and a ton of help getting there. Private school may not be the easiest thing for them, but I think in the long-term, it’ll be the best thing.
