^. And don’t forget having older sibs that the teachers remember.
The whole reason why some moms do PTA is so that their families are known to the admin and teachers. It is Lord of the Flies out there.
When kiddo knew he was applying, he made an extra effort to get to know his public school teachers, otherwise they wouldn’t know him. These overworked teachers have 6 periods of 25+ kids. They aren’t giving meaty assignments because they don’t have the time to read and grade them. By the time they write recs they have had maybe 12 weeks with your child’s class, these days via zoom. It is unrealistic to expect a public school teacher in our district to know a kid well enough to write anything deep in a rec.
Kiddo was lucky enough to have a great math teacher that year who let him hang out with her after school once a week and was supportive of him teaching himself geometry (not offered by school) and applying to bs. She gave him a textbook and helped him if he had questions. But if he had the teacher from the year before, he would have been sunk.
Epilogue: according to a mom I just spoke to, the great math teacher is not great at distance teaching - she can’t keep up with the avalanche of emails she gets and doesn’t get to know the students.
Sorry for the long post. Point is, public school kids are probably at a disadvantage if recommendations are weighted heavily.