@mwolf - yup, I do understand and believe that some magnet schools have great diversity, comparatively. Some don’t (I don’t know much about it, but Stuyvessant has problems with diversity iirc). Not going to debate who has better diversity. It is so community and school-specific.
We just live in a community where no such magnet schools exist and diversity is almost non-existent. It became increasingly apparent to us as kiddo got older, that the lack of diversity in our local public schools was a real problem.
My point was just that we were impressed with the diversity at kiddo’s boarding school (51% students of color) and It was counterintuitive to us that we could find it at an “elite” school. The generous financial aid puts these schools in reach if you have the grades, etc. Just trying to dispel the stereotype that these schools are full of snotty preppies. There are lots of “normal” people at these schools. If a person values diversity and isn’t wealthy, they shouldn’t reject the entire category of schools out of hand based on outdated stereotypes. Many people do because they don’t know what the schools are really like. We didn’t know, that’s for sure.
Anyway, this is a tangent. Sorry OP.