<p>Roughly thirteen percent of filings had an adjusted gross income over $100,000. Most tax filers cannot afford prep school. I am willing to wager money that most families care deeply about their children’s education but are limited financially in what they can do.</p>
<p>everyone I know pays 35k or more for their kids high school. Whether you’re writing a check to Choate or making a mortgage payment in Palos Verdes you’re paying 35k+ for high school. Price of admission to a public (prep) school in California that matriculates 98% of its students to college (80% to a 4 year…Cal, UCLA, Ivy’s and top LAC’s) is 1 million plus in home price. So the family living in the east in a 500k house paying 35k for private prep is no different than the family paying over a million to be in the right neighborhood with the “right” school. same in north shore of chicago, same way in the east bay of san francisco, so forth and so on…what’s the big deal, everyone is paying 35k.</p>
<p>and almost all the kids at my daughter’s public (prep) school did leadership or mock trial or sports or whatever because they loved it. and generally because the community and school had awesome coaches and mentors that helped them love it. NOT because they were padding their resume for some far off future known as college 2 or 3 years beyond their thoughts or concerns.</p>
<p>Holy smokes, that’s a heck of a lot of money even for wealthy parents. That made me curious about my circle of friends and what they’re paying. Nearly everyone I know sends their kids to the excellent public schools in my town. I know one family sending kids to the Menlo School ($33,600/year) and two sending kids to Saint Francis, a relative bargain at $13,400/year. That’s it among my 2 sons’ peer group of perhaps 300 students. The public schools in the Bay Area are among the best in the state. It’s not so common in my experience to pay the big bucks for private high schools.</p>
<p>vball, you’re missing the point. your house in “the valley” cost more than 1 million, probably a lot more…that’s your version of 35k a year prep school cost. if you didn’t care about sending your kid to an excellent public school you probably wouldn’t be living in that 1.7 million dollar home in los gatos, or wherever you are…how many single people move to these high prices suburbs with great public schools? zero</p>
<p>Our private( high ) schools in Seattle run about $20,000- even where (Bill)Gates &( Paul) Allen went.
I have known a few kids who attended boarding schools & some parents who even sent their 5 kids there, ( & airfare adds up) & while I wish that every family could have a choice for their childrens education- what strikes me the most about this thread is the title.</p>
<p>Sad to see DD prep high school didn’t make the Forbes top 20 prep school.</p>
<p>I did send both of our kids to private school for at least part of their education.
I had never even known anyone who had attended private school before I had children- unless it was parochial school, although my father did ask me in jr high if I wanted to attend Lakeside. I lived in the burbs & Lakeside was in Seattle- what?</p>
<p>When my oldest was ready for K- the public school that was 4 blocks away was our first choice until the K teacher suggested to keep looking ( when I asked, what D could do, when the teacher was working on reading with other kids).
Eventually found a very chaotic looking ( because of materials strewn about) school held in a closed public school, but there was something about it.
That was where she went for elementary ( although they had moved that summer & now basically have their own building)</p>
<p>My point is- we were very happy with it- it didn’t matter one whit that it might not have the same " cachet or prestige" as other schools in the area.
Can you eat cachet? Is prestige going to help your child polish her strenghts and strenghten her weaknesses?</p>
<p>I have never understood either the motivation of parents to get children into a certain school before they are even born!.
How do they know what they are going to be like?
( well I admit- their personality can be somewhat apparent in utero, I should have known that my 2nd was going to be * very* strong willed.)</p>
<p>If college is about fit ( and it is to " some" extent), then I think K-12 is even more so.
If the school is a good fit, it meets your expectation & needs, then how is it even relevant if it is used in an article to sell magazines?
Is that really what you need to feel good about your decisions?
Really?</p>
<p>Absolutely, people pay a premium to live in towns with good school districts. So pacheight you’re saying you live in an area of sub-million dollar homes and everyone you know spends $35K/year to send their kids out of their “poor” neighborhood?</p>
<p>If I had to chose between making the 35K mortgage payment and private HS for DD, I won’t have paid for private HS. I’ve always believed in paying towards my retirement, mortgage for primary house before making any payment towards the private schools.</p>
<p>I was talking about parent who have the cash flow above their primary house which they use to buy vacation property in Tahoe or beach houses or rental property in order to build assets over private schools for children.</p>
<p>I don’t consider primary house as disposable asset instead it’s a necessity.</p>
<p>^^no, sorry I’m not being clear. everyone in my community lives in a home that costs more than 1 million. and send their kid to public high school. think Palo Alto High.</p>
<p>therefore everyone is choosing a 35k a year prep school education for their kids. and this is the same as some living in a 500k condo in boston yet writing a check for 35k to a private prep.</p>
<p>both value and in reality are paying out 35k a year fo their kids high school education.</p>
<p>your 35k just comes out in higher mortgage payments, property tax, up keep, etc…</p>
<p>it doesn’t matter if people pay even more money to send their kids to private prep and not the local great public high school in the community of million dollar homes. that just means you have more money. BUT everyone is paying the 35k…this is basic econ…</p>
<p>everyone values paying 35k for their kids high school, they just pay it different ways</p>
<p>emeraldkity4: I don’t know why do you say this:
</p>
<p>We sent DD to this school even though we knew it’s a young school with not much of a history. We at that time was even ready to move to NE/MA to consider private prep schools on that list. If the point was to send them to top 10/20 top prep school then we would have moved but the point was to find the best fit for DD and we found it in her prep HS in the bay area.</p>
<p>I sincerely believe after knowing the HS through DD’s experience that it deserve to be on that list. If I was obsessed with ranking over a fit then I would have asked DD to join Princeton over MIT because Princeton consistently come up as a higher ranking institute on US News ranking.</p>
<p>There are an awful lot of families at Harvard-Westlake who live in multi-million dollar houses AND who are paying over $30k a year for prep school. The students at the schools on the Forbes list overwhelmingly come from very wealthy families. That number of families is dwarfed by those who can’t afford either the expensive home in the high-ranking school district or the pricey private school tuition. And there just aren’t enough scholarships or spots to accomodate all of those kids. That’s basic economics. </p>
<p>Well, Pacheight, we don’t fit into either of your scenarios (#170). </p>
<p>Ya see, you are talking of wealthy families who either live in very expensive homes and/or send their kids to private K-12 (or HS). But many have NEITHER choice. </p>
<p>POIH, you talked about if it came down to it, paying for either private high school or else private college, and you would have picked (if you had to pick) high school. You also talked a lot about priorities (but your example is private high school vs. second home…as if everyone had those options!) Our family also HIGHLY values education and it is a TOP priority. But it ain’t between education vs. second home (we have just one home). And we live in a home that hardly comes close to a million dollar home! We don’t have private day schools in this area and so logistically those are not even an option even if we could afford it. Those who send their kids to private schools from our community send them to boarding schools out of state (more money than your D’s elite day school). We would never consider sending our kids away for high school but it is not as if we could afford it and the idea never came up. But you spent OUT OF CURRENT INCOME for your D’s prep school tuition. That is simply nothing we could ever remotely do. We’d much rather pay for college than high school. Going to the state university was never an option, even though it is a very nice school, because for starters, it doesn’t even offer either of our kids’ majors. As well, the experience would be very different from our sending them away to expand beyond their Vermont roots and mix with kids from all around the world and at their appropriate level of challenge in their college years. But even for college, we can’t pay out of CURRENT income and have borrowed money and will be paying off two kids’ UG and one kid’s grad schools for many years. And we still believe our kids have been very fortunate and privileged. Also, while growing up, we paid lotsa bucks for many EC endeavors, as well as summer programs out of state every year. This is not nearly the cost of private K-12, but more than many other local families are able to do. Also, you have just ONE child and many of us have more. Being able to afford these educational opportunities and enrichment doubles or triples (or more) for many families than you have had with an only child. </p>
<p>In any case, pacheight and POIH are talking of options that only those in the highest income brackets can begin to consider. It just is not an option for middle class families (or lower) no matter how much such families prioritize and value a fine education. We did not pick our children’s high school. They certainly did fine in college admissions and so far in their young lives. I have nothing against private K-12 education, but it just is not an option for the majority of families and those of us who already struggle to find a way to pay for college education. (we did pay for private nursery school, which is a drop in the bucket in terms of tuition compared to private high school!)</p>
not so much. Your post, consolation, is well reasoned and well worded. It contains no inflammatory remarks or condescending, provocative baiting and flaming. The fact that the elite boarding schools and prep schools are feeders to the top LACs and universities is a big duh. This is not news to anyone here. </p>
<p>As for the choice between expensive housing or quality education, for us, we chose moderately priced housing in a nice neighborhood, but paid for a private education. Our home is in a good school district, but overall our state’s public school is not so great think of it as one of the best of one of the worst). Fortunately we were able to choose to educate our kids in a good private school, but if we had to make a switch to the public system for economic reasons, as many families have had to in recent years, we were in the best school district in the area. We know several people who live in far flashier houses in less desirable school districts who had to pull their kids when the economy tanked. </p>
<p>What I would not have done, unless my kid needed a military school or something, would have been to send them off to boarding school. I woulnt have missed the opportunity to live with them day-to-day for anything, and I think they know better how to interact with adults than if they had been in boarding school. They also learned quickly how to navigate awful commuter traffic on a daily basis. I guess that was just a side benefit.</p>
<p>yes, i am only talking about families in affluent neighborhoods. Which in California means the cheapest home is 1 million, the average is 1.7 or higher depending on your zip code. So that’s a population of a couple hundred thousand families, 400,000+ people.</p>
<p>they all choose to work hard and afford these communities. And the #1 reason is the school. location, proximity to work, investment quality all come after that. This is a choice to “pay” for a very good public high school. </p>
<p>Affluent people who don’t have kids spend their money somewhere else. Nicer cars, more vacations, a place in the city, etc.</p>
<p>Paying 35k to a prep school or buying into an affluent-excellent public school community is the SAME behavior.</p>
<p>And OP, these are general numbers I’m not actually comparing the math of 35k to 500k or a 1.7 million home…it’s an economic “value” that makes the person moving to Palos Verdes the SAME as the person writing a check to a private school.</p>
<p>Values and where you spend your money…econ 101</p>
<p>Ivyhope: I think it’s unrealistic to think that a school that is only 10 years old would show up on a best list. Schools are not like internet companies, schools take a long time to build great staffs, attract smart kids, and build excellent facilities…and have good sports. takes decades! And even with decades it takes great leadership and a lot of money. look at college, it took Duke 50 years to enter the rarified air of the top 20, USC is taking about the same time. And both spent billions to get there. (assuming post wwii is when you mark the start of the education race, aka arms race:))</p>
<p>it’ll take a new prep school the same amount of time, and millions of dollars.</p>
<p>Okay - I’ll agree with pacheight to a limited extent. There certainly are people who’ll actively figure out which school districts and particular schools (public) consistently rank higher than others and will stretch their dollars to buy a home there specifically for the school district, as opposed to elsewhere if they can. The ‘if they can’ is important because whether they desire to or not, many people simply can’t afford the price of admission to Palos Verdes, Los gatos, Rancho Santa Fe/Fairbanks Ranch/Del Mar in the San Diego area ($$$), and similar areas. For the majority of people who can’t afford these areas the "spending $35K/yr one way or the other’ doesn’t apply. However, they might be spending an extra $300 or $500 or $1K per month, whatever they can afford, to get into a house in the best school district they can. I see this happening all over and I’m sure it applies to many posters on CC. So the idea pacheight is presenting of an individual paying the extra bucks in housing for a better public vs. cash for private tuition has some validity but the scale is completely off. Most people couldn’t afford to spend an extra $3K/mo for their house payment regardless of whether they wanted to or not and even then, the extra 36K they’re paying to be in the higher ranked public might not buy the equivalent of 36K at a private.</p>
<p>POIH - What is this Forbes ranking anyway? Who are they to do a ranking? The figure of ‘top 20’ versus ‘top 25’ or ‘top 15’ is arbitrary anyway. Would you have been happier if your D’s school made the list if it happened to be a top 25 list and her school was number 25 or would you have been just as ‘sad’ since it wasn’t in the top 20? If so then you’d probably be ‘sad’ even if it made this arbitrary top 20 list but wasn’t at a higher position than it ended up in unless it happened to be number one. My point - this arbitrary list is nothing worth getting ‘sad’ about or worked up about. Your D went there, she apparently did fine, she’s moved on, and will likely continue to do fine. You should be happy because it’s no doubt worked out just as you would have liked in your dreams.</p>
<p>Edit - cross-posted with pacheight’s last couple of posts</p>
<p>pacheight: I think you might have tendency to jump to conclusion without going indepth into the topic.</p>
<p>DD prep HS was founded in 1893 as a feeder school for Stanford. It’s just that it remained K-8th grade for a long time before opening doors for high school in 1999.</p>
<p>To the OP, sad to see your sadness relating to the sad effort by your daughter’s prep school’s unsuccessful attempt to crack the Forbes 20 list. Sadly, it is unlikely to change anytime soon. [single tear trickles down cheek, sniffles softly, sighs wistfully]</p>