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I am strongly pro public school. I don't have the financial resources to send DS to a private school anyway. I believe that a good education should be available to all children regardless of socioeconomic status and I'm against the use of public funds for school choice voucher programs.

I live in an area where the public schools are looked down upon by the middle and upper class white people. Private schools are seen as the best alternative. I also work with educators in both private and public schools. It's a tough situation, especially in the state of IL and Chicago specifically. I hope this administration does not set us back.

Homeschoolong is not an option because I'm the breadwinner, but even if I wasn't I lack the skills as an educator. I also think the socialization is important preparation for the real world.

The schools where we live are mediocre at best (and I work in the public schools!) For us, religious ed is also very important. If the public schools were better AND had less of a focus on high stakes testing, I would consider going public but I am less than impressed with what goes on in the public schools. I've seen schools that focus on prepping their kids to take a standardized test as young as grade 1 and it makes me sick. I feel like I could definitely homeschool for a while, but socialization is really important in a school setting.

@mrs.kiwi: which reminds me that I failed to mention, often in public schools here the kids only go to classes in their "tested" subjects once they reach a grade that does have standardized testing. No writing test in 5th? Guess what? We aren't going to spend time writing until we get back in 7th when it's tested! It honestly sickens me. I want my children to receive a well-rounded education in all grades!

In our situation, we are expats so we wanted our child to go to a school where the language of instruction is a language we speak at home, so we chose private school. We also get an education stipend from my DH's employer, so private school is totally affordable. If we lived in a place where public school was taught in one of our two home languages, we would most likely put our children in public school. As for home schooling, neither my DH nor I are qualified or have the desire to teach our LOs.

We were planning on public, but then we felt DD1 needed an extra academic challenge that it couldn't provide so we went private. She's still ahead of her peers at private school so we feel like we made the right decision for her.

We've never considered homeschooling.

@macintosh: Agree!

We don't really live in the best school district, but I believe in public schools and I know a few coworkers who went through this school district, so I know you can get a quality education here, despite it's bad reputation. I'm really hoping public school works out for my kids, but we'll re-evaluate if necessary.

So we've recently been faced with some of the same decisions. When we got pregnant with DD1, it was surprise. We had JUST started Savin money while living with my in laws but we didn't want to live there with an LO so we rushed a put a small cheap house on family land that was given to us. We knew we didn't want her in this school district but we thought we'd deal with it later. But later has come. She will be 4 this year, we will be enrolling her in preschool about 30 minutes away this fall. Our whole lives are in the town 30 minutes away, church, friends, library, groceries, everything. So we've decided on public schooling but we will be moving within the next 1 to 3 years to the school district we want her in and the town we spend our time in.

Private preschool because there is a crazy long wait list/lottery to get into public preschool. Plus our public preschool is very academic and the preschool my kids go to is play based, which I prefer.
Public school after preschool though. Our schools are pretty good and although there are some issues at the moment, other neighboring towns have excellent schools and I'd rather move than pay for private school so I can continue to sah or work pt. I wouldn't trust myself to homeschool and it wouldn't be good for my sanity.

@looch: No, we don't do a co-op and probably won't do one. We do have a homeschool group that does social and field trip-type activities that we meet up with regularly. They also do big events, both academic and social, that are pretty much exactly like what you'd find in the school system. And then we have a bunch of other friends (some homeschool, some not) we hang out with.

Homeschool intrigues me nowadays with all the virtual offerings! I think parents before stayed away thinking they could never teach calculus and world history and all the subjects well enough. Now there are so many Open Educational Resources OER and so many free virtual options.

@looch: I should add: We'd consider outsourcing, but probably not through a co-op. For example, we'd hire a tutor or do a class if that seemed like the best path for a particular situation. Co-ops are kind of a different animal.

@honeybear: or possibly consider the local community college? I have heard about parents doing that as you get to the more specialized subjects. I really like that idea for high school.

Reason why I am asking is that I am trying to figure out (I know we have a long time) what some options are for high school. I'll post to your wall.

@looch: High school is pretty far away. But yes, we keep in mind where we're headed and routinely reconsider how we're doing things, and we'd consider sending him to college classes in high school if that seems appropriate when we get to that point. I have some friends who do community college classes for their high schoolers and it seems to be working out well.

We have really good public schools all around us -- basically our community school and any we would/could choose to be bussed to are great. But most of them are pretty big. Both DH and I were full public school kids (and my mom was a teacher there), so I never expected to do anything different and bought our house based on schools, etc. But DD1 definitely thrives more in big fish/small pond situations and is a total wallflower if not...plus we lack community ourselves since we just moved to this big-ish city a 1.5y ago. So we are going to do a private school close to us that is academically on-par with the public schools, but just a lot smaller (2 classes of 17-20 kids per grade). We'll likely switch to public, either before middle school or definitely for high school, but feel like the size & flexibility of the private school, as well as the family community it fosters for all of us, will be better for her. It's also not financially outrageous, although I could think of more fun things to do with any amount of $$!

The plan would be to do the same for DD2 and DS, but we'll cross those bridges when we get to them

Public school is the plan. I have no desire to homeschool. I don't know anything about educating kids.

@Mrs. Sunshine: maybe I can sell you my house. We want to move closer to family but it's been a slow process. I told DH we just have to move before fall 2021 when R starts K.

@looch: I've heard that from another person- I'm hopeful it will work for my daughter too!

Public school for us.

We specifically bought our home in our town, with really high taxes, just because of the school system, so fingers crossed we like it! We have quite a few private schools nearby so if we need to, that could also be an option.

My husband likes the idea of homeschooling our kids (in a romantic-type way, when thinking logically I'm not sure he'd have the patience), but it would never work for our family for a long list of reasons.

Public. We would consider sending LO to private (non-religious only) for a few select reasons but we would never consider homeschooling.

@mrs.kiwi: I really wanted to homeschool my oldest child after preschool (he attended private prek). He is 2E, and I knew I could meet his academic needs better than anyone else. At the end of his preschool year, though, our son actually really wanted to go to Kindergarten (he actually begged us for the chance)...and my husband and I figured that it would be good to let him try, especially since he felt so invested, and to see how it went. If things didn't go well, we figured we could always withdraw him and homeschool. We ended up choosing a public school, and will be continuing there next year for first grade. Our current plan is to make year-by-year decisions based on his needs. We also are enrolled in a math group online (recommended by one of his teachers) and do a lot of enrichment at home. This year has been extremely difficult for him emotionally/socially/behaviorally, but we feel that, overall, he's significantly benefitting from being there. We have plans to let DS2 start junior prek at the same school when he turns 3 (through early intervention).

Our intentions are to send our children to public school. Our county has really impressive public schools, and at this point in time I don't see the value in choosing private education when we could be putting additional funds towards college savings instead. That being said, if we felt that for some reason the public schools aren't meeting our child/ren's needs then we wouldn't hesitate to look into non-religious private school (most religious schools I've encountered don't actually provide superior education to public and since we aren't super religious, there is no value there for me). While I do believe that all children should have access to a public school system that serves them well, if it's not working out for my kid, I won't leave them in a less than ideal situation for the sake of making a political point when I have the resources to improve things for them. If both kids ended up in private we would likely just move back to the next county over that has lower home prices because of the less impressive public schools.

Homeschooling is definitely not something we would consider for our family. First of all, my husband and I both work and enjoy our work and enjoy the financial resources our jobs provide to our family, so staying home to teach is not an option. Second of all, I'm in finance and my husband is a corporate recruiter, and though we are both highly educated, we are certainly not more apt to teach our children than professional educators. And lastly, I don't believe you can truly socialize a child without them learning to build a social network WITHOUT their parents being around all the time.