We have all four of ours in private school -- just moved them this year and I could not be happier with the situation. We have four very different kids... one gifted and one with an LD and they work with each of them both academically and socially to strive to meet their true potential. There is a cap at our school... so we pay $13,500 plus about $500 in book fees for all four kids.

My three kids have always been in private and SS joined them in 7th grade. SS will go to public HS next year and my three will continue on in their private school and their dad and I will decide where they will go at that point.

SSstb14 is lazy. I will not pay any more money towards his education and DH and BM can't afford it.

My three all have very different needs, DD12 is artsy and has ADD, DD11 is on the Autism Spectrum, extremely intelligent and well behaved, but not so great socially and DS9 is a ball of personality, great at sports and does fine in school.

my Bios go to public school..i wouldn't have it any other way!

I could care less about where PB attends...probably somewhere where they speak tongues and sacrifice lambs...

I am a public school all the way person. And fortunately our public school is one of the top ten in the nation. We have a ton of Choice programs and amazing curriculum. Even if we could afford it, we'd keep them in public.

I am a huge proponent for public schools. Save your money for the kid's college. I refuse to pay tuition for a private school when my tax dollars are already funding public schools.

I have dealt with private schools in two different states where the requirements of "teachers"/staff were less than that of its public school counter parts...that and testing was not held to the same standard as public schools.

Public. We don't have access to private schools that are non-religious based unless we want to drive 40 min one way. We do however have very good public schools with excellent opportunities and assistance/support in place for all special needs (behavior as well as disabilities. BM lives in an off shoot of our town and the skids go to the only school there it's k-8 no special needs and no support system. SO now has ss in therapy, a regular doc etc and documenting the crap out of what he needs already we're seeing improvement but the kids would still have more success in our district (after 8th grade they'll go to our district anyway and go from a school with 2000 kids to a graduating class of 2000)

I homeschool. I feel as strongly about homeschooling as some of you feel about public school. To each her own.

We did both. SS attended the best public schools in our cities through 10th grade then military boarding school for 11th and 12th grade.

Tuition was 12K/yr plus $1500 set up costs for the first year (Uniforms and equipment) and travel expenses to and from the school. The best deal available for a top 20 boarding school.

The military school thing is a family tradition. My dad attended as did I and my younger brother. The school we attended no longer exists so we did exhaustive research before selecting the school for SS.

My SDs did public school. (2 graduated, now in college, 1 still in HS.) I LOATHE their school, it's horrid. High teen pregnancy rate, high drop out rate, and the teachers are phoning it in. We went to parent / teacher conferences once for my oldest SD, and I mentioned to her English teacher that I had to correct SD's grammar fairly frequently. She actually said to me, "Oh, I wouldn't bother. If she doesn't know it by now she's not ever going to know it." I was APPALLED.

If we can swing it financially, I'll send our bios to private school for HS. Fortunately (we live in a different town than the one the SDs grew up in) our public elementary and middle schools are much better. I'll keep the bios in free public school as long as I feel they're getting a decent education.

Eesh....This is a tough one.

I went to a private school, and while I didn't exactly like my time there (I really didn't fit in), I was an honors student and had some really great teachers. Each of the teacher's had (at minimum) a Master's degree and over 20 years of teaching experience. By the time I hit grade 8, all my teachers pegged me as a future engineer. I didn't even know what an engineer was before my history teacher told me. I think private school may benefit my SS but that is not to say that the public school system is failing him. The public school system in my area is HORRIBLY underfunded. I honestly don't know how some of these teacher's do it. Teaching must a labor of love, because I am certain no one does it for the money. It's disgusting really. They are held to such high standards and are forced to deal with cut-backs after cut-backs. It's not fair on the teachers, and in turn, not fair on the students.

So given the choice, I would rather send my kids (including my SS) to private school.

Where I live, public school is just not an option unfortunately