Seems like the school should be asked to reassess their “off limits” policy. The BSs we visited all made it clear that the day students would be invited to all spaces including dorms. This is a shame and I am sorry your kid is going through it.
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This. My sense is that most schools try very hard to integrate day and boarding students. @skieurope often posts that the only difference between them is where they lay their heads at night. Clearly, this is not the OP’s child’s case, and I’m very sorry to hear that. There have been some good suggestions upthread, and I’m glad that the rest of the student’s experience at this school is positive, but it does seem like the school itself has some work to do and needs to be made aware of specifics.
I wonder if the OP is comfortable naming the school, perhaps current parents and students at that school would chime in (or PM) and maybe assist the OP in making valid concerns known.
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Depending on how a school handled the 20-21 academic year, it could well have been an absolute wipeout in terms of social development and friendships (not to mention academics, athletics, mental health, etc etc etc ).
20-21 was our kids’ first year at their school. And it was really bad. Nearly 100% remote/zoom ‘teaching’ and extremely limited IRL interactions for the entire year. It was extremely rough on everyone but especially on those students entering that year, who of course did not yet have any existing support network at the school.
And, those “friendships” which did develop were so tenuous owed to the circumstances that they ultimately didn’t provide much of a base of support for many kids. At least not that we and our kids saw or experienced.
And then there’s the whole issue of being a day student at a boarding school. Obviously each school has their own % breakdown, and culture surrounding this. But the sad truth is that in terms of intergrating day and boarding students into a unified community, some schools make a very active, concerted, strong, and even successful effort to do so. Lawrenceville is a good example of this.
Other schools…not so much.
In your case OP, I agree with the others that the ‘off limits’ policy to even common areas within dorms is, frankly, insane. Not to mention actively exclusionary. Not only would I withhold financial support owed to this, I would make known explicitly my reason for doing so. I wonder if you couldn’t get a few other day student families to do the same.
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