After one year in private day high school (and 8 years in K-8 private school) my daughter begs us to let her switch to public school… She says small school is suffocating her… Our public is 3500 kids…She wants to know kids next door, not next town… She also recently figured out that she is going to concentrate on tech, science and math and her private school is more of an artsy place and she thinks public will offer here more choices…
What are you kid’s college goals? Are they in the STEM fields? If so then she may have a point. How does your public HS do with college admissions? Generally the private schools do better, but there is quite a bit of variation. If your child does well academically, she can do well coming from either a private or public HS.
How strong is your public HS? The problem is if she goes to a public HS where the academic standards are weak.
If she’s gone to private school since K, does she have any friends who attend the public high school?
My personal experience: entering a large public high school as a new kid who doesn’t know anyone is often socially difficult. Plus if your child is accustomed to small private schools, a large public school is an extremely different place and it may be a huge adjustment. More kids doesn’t necessarily mean more kids your kid will want to be friends with.
Academics between public and private schools seems to depend a lot on the schools in question.
Is she looking for more STEM coursework or extracurriculars or both?
Let her. She has the study skills and background to shine at the LPS and will find her home and friends there once she joins clubs and teams. 3500 is big for a high school but still small compared to most colleges and universities. And you can use your tuition money for a private college counselor if that is a concern …
Yes, begging to leave a high school after a year should be taken seriously. There may be things going on there socially that she isn’t telling you about - don’t make her stay there for three more years.
Our public is one of the best in the state and I guess one of the most demanding. She was interested in psychology until recently when she decided she wants to go into math/stem-related field…
She know a lot of kids who go to public schools, some love it, some hate it so…
We have one in public and one in private. I would say that there are more course offerings in a large public vs. a small private, but I would talk to the school and see how many of the students that want to get into specific classes do. What happens if she doesn’t get into a class she needs as a prerequisite to take additional classes in a course sequence?
You will definitely be giving up individualized attention, access to teachers and quality college counseling. She will really have to be able to advocate for herself not to get lost.
As for the pros: I found my one in public is exposed to a lot more socially (as in inappropriate behavior). We often call her school “the circus” because of the distractions happening during class. However, we actually see this as a pro as she wants to be an ER nurse in an urban area. I think she’d be seriously lacking in exposure to “the real world” if she had gone to a small private school. She also has much more of “a life” in town than my son that goes to private school a half hour away (thus, why he is looking at boarding schools). You will find it surprising how much more she can do in a day without the extended hours and compute. Don’t discount social time and downtime for a teen. She even has time for a job, which has also been a great learning experience.
My niece switched from a small local day school to the local high school. She felt the school was too small to offer the courses she wanted and was thus “A waste of money.” She’s now a successful teacher.
Many private schools can’t even spell STEM (or the acronym of the day, STEAM), some can spell it but don’t really have a coherent program, and only a few really propel their students in this area. So sounds like she’s making an informed choice.