<p>Most of our kids are happy and thriving at their BS’s. But from the posts on CC, I do read about some areas the schools could improve upon to make the experience even better. </p>
<p>Well here is your opportunity to offer recommendation on any aspect of BS with which you are less than satisfied. Maybe the school administrations may take notice. If you voice a gripe, also offer a possible solution.</p>
<p>Please do NOT dump on any individual school!</p>
<p>Hard question to answer. The schools vary so much. While one may need to focus less on donors, or do better faculty screening, others may not be guilty of these things at all. My kids are at two very different schools. Perfect? No, but infinitely better than their local options. </p>
<p>I can’t think of any sweeping generalities that BS’s need to improve. It’s individual, and I’m trying to imagine how a public critique would be more effective than an anonymous survey, for example.</p>
<p>I could (and just might) write a book on this. For us it has been a theme around the notion that BS is not mini-college and these students need different , support, guidance, mentoring at 13, 14, 15 or 16 years of age than. Behind those beautiful facilities and highly rigorous academics are stressed, driven kids craving for adults who will step into the roles of parents and help guide and support. And, if they can’t do better to support the kids, then they should disclose very very clearly: CAUTION: this school is not for the faint of heart (kids or parents)!</p>
<p>I agree with Cogent about the difficulty of trying to do something outside the “curriculum”. These schools exist in a definite “bubble”, and if your child’s interest is inside the bubble, that’s easy. </p>
<p>But if your child has a passion that involves leaving the school, traveling to outside performances, conferences or competitions, or hoping to integrate some outside work with their classes, it is rough. </p>
<p>Students are typically very busy with classes, school ECs, friends, and simply do not have the time and energy to keep up their outside interests, apart from the summer. </p>
<p>This is something serious to consider with kids who are “outside the bubble” unless you live close enough to coordinate/drive personally. I wish the schools would make that clear from the beginning (they do not), and also that they would try to be more flexible, to foster the unique passions that kids may have spent years developing. </p>
<p>Examples include less popular sports (figure skating, fencing, martial arts), less common languages, nationally or internationally competitive academic competitions in an area where the school does not have a team, etc.</p>
<p>This topic was raised on another thread: the BS treating parents like checkbooks, rather than engaging their participation more. The school administration/teachers/advisor are slow to return emails & phone calls when we parents have an issue, but they are quick to communicate w the parents when the kid commits some offense.</p>
<p>This is a small, very specific gripe in the scheme of things, but I wish my kid’s school would have a 24-window for coming and going from school, particularly for kids living outside driving distance. It is almost impossible to get a reasonably priced flight to and from school, given the small window of time we have to get our son in and out.</p>
<p>Excellent point, classicalmama. And to add to that, I wish that Thanksgiving could be done differently. The travel dates are expensive, and jet lag for just a week off doesn’t seem worth it. I would love to see the schools make this a long weekend (when long distance kids could stay local) and then make winter break longer.</p>
<p>I agree about variability and it is not just across schools it may be within a school. I am not for unanimity, but at my kids school it is so person dependent. Some awesome, caring, highly motivated adults and then some real slackers. One of my kids has had for the most part a tremendous experience while the others has been sub par. The school blames it on the second child, but they don’t look in the mirror or hold each other accountable.</p>
<p>My main interaction is with the school’s websites. One website is filled with weekly if not daily news. I have another, that seems covered with dust and is border line annoying just to check and see no updates for weeks, except for the team scores. Another, filled with updated news and videos but refuses to mention the game score because it doesn’t want to boast. That would be understandable, if they always pummeled everyone but they don’t. I can just imagine some parents going bonkers in lieu of game ghost scores. So, if there is to be a constructive response, it would have to be maintain and update regularly the school’s websites. One I know even has a blog but I have yet to join the conversation. </p>
<p>In respect to outside interest, that is up to the school. Current school accepts independent projects in lieu of a team sport for a semester. The other school that I am very familiar with certainly entertains new clubs. IMO all depends on the school. Our experience has been that there are numerous opportunities to do more and certainly no comparison with our local PS. In fact, one issue is our guy doing too much that we get concerned about academics. But, it seems to be what makes him go and then there is all that we don’t know and I don’t know if I want to know.</p>
<p>Cost control is the main issue IMHO. These schools cost more than a top college and the cost just keeps going up. It’s not a problem for the multi-millonaires or those on financial aid but for those in the “middle” the value is not there.</p>
<p>I also don’t see all the money benefiting students but rather paying for grand facilities and lots of administrative overhead. More staff is hired to raise more money to pay for more fund raising staff - as OW stated "The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.</p>
<p>My experience is that the promise of individualization is an empty one. Yes there is a better S:T ratio than public schools but staff have a lot more to do like being house parents, etc. than PS teachers. It’s rare for a student to have someone work with them individually on a math or english assignment to really help meet that student at their level. I think a good PS supplemented with individual tutors is a much better value at least for academics.</p>
<p>I also see a lot of kids come apart in independent schools - the pressure is not always well managed and students aren’t always getting the support they need. If a student isn’t fitting in well, schools are too fast to “dump” them back in the PS systems.</p>
<p>@LC I’m not going to fence with you but have yet to experience what you state, in fact, quite the contrary other than the private institutions must be frugal with their finances. Sounds like you should keep your kids in PS as BS is not for everyone.</p>
<p>LakeClouds, our BS experience has been the opposite of yours. I think this experience differs by school. My children have found their boarding school teachers and staff to be very approachable.</p>
<p>I agree with Periwinkle, it must depend on the school as our experience has been the polar opposite of @LC’s. Teachers have been VERY involved in my daughter’s progress, there is constant appraisal and very small classes. She is NOT a number, she is a child known to all. Maybe because she attends a smaller school?
I don’t think you can lump ALL BSs into a category any more than you can lump all PSs into one catgeory</p>
<p>I have two children at the same school and their experiences have been almost polar opposite, so I’m sure different schools will vary too. What is so challenging for us is how do we respond to the question - how do u like your kid’s BS? Some aspects of the school have been so very, very positive and others so completely zapping. A lot of it is having an advisor who cares and who is there for our child. One of our children has had this and has thrived - it helped in every aspect of his experience. The other child had an advisor who was brand new and who in the end seemed to realize that working at a BS wasn’t a dream job after all. So child number two is on the second advisor and may end up having three when all is said and done. </p>
<p>There have been so many positives for child #1, he has been prepared for college - academically, as a person, everything. For #2 not so much, the academics have been okay and in a couple cases sub par, the lack of an on site caring advisor has made things very challenging - adults say #2 should advocate for himself, meanwhile #1 has had a savvy on site advocate from day 1. </p>
<h1>2 is learning some valuable lessons too, just not the ones we expected, and it really sticks in our craw to be paying so much for our child to learn that lifes not always fair and how to persevere in the face of adversity.</h1>
<p>I think a thread like this talking about the not so great side of BS is good. Wish we had had something like this a few years back when we were looking at schools.</p>
<p>Our experience mirrors MDMomofTwo. Our daughter has been on leave while at SYA and we still feel involved in her home school as if she were on campus. She’s in the directory, we get all the notices and invites, and notes from her advisor. We get the school newspaper and the bulletins. That’s in addition to all the stuff we get from SYA. I’ve heard similar stories about other schools which is why we tell parents look BEYOND prestige to what is the core philosophy of the school in terms of it’s interaction with students and family outside of academics. </p>
<p>How a school approaches this process is a good question to ask during school interviews. We are more than satisfied with our situation.</p>
<p>Exie, this isn’t to disagree with you at all, but I do want to mention, just once, that your daughter attends a very prestigious school! I know that wasn’t the motivation in her choosing it, and I appreciate your point in getting people to broaden their search, but just sayin’. :)</p>
<p>Hey @Lemonade! Remember a few years ago when people suggested that her school was “not” prestigious and insisted we’d settled for "lower tier? 
It’s amazing how times have changed perception. I kept telling parents to look for schools that are nurturing (and still have bandages from the reactions to that - lol!)</p>
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<p>Agree with this completely. There seems to be limited quality control or training provided to teachers. Some are good, some are terrible, some are fair and too many play favorites.</p>
<p>I find many of the teacher’s are young and less experienced. As a group they are less experienced than at the public HS. Some of the best teachers have left. I also find that there’s limited coordination of what one teaches versus another or how they grade. For the amount being spent, I expect more consistent quality. It seems to me that the administration is more focused on fund-raising than quality-raising.</p>
<p>From our perspective, it is not the administration, or the teachers or advising, that make the school, but the students. My daughter’s experience with the other bright, creative, interesting, passionate, diverse students all around her has been a huge positive discovery. I think of her school as groups of amazing kids who teach each other. The teachers guide from the background, and the administration tries to provide the space. Their main function (yes, it is Harkness method) is not to screw it up and just to let it happen. </p>
<p>That is what we are paying for, for her NOT to feel like the weird nerdy kid who studies too hard and gets made fun of when she tries to start an intellectual conversation with anyone in school. (And, she was in a pretty good public school and is a fairly normal person who also likes sports.) She helps other students in her best subjects, they help her in their strong areas, and they are a very tight knit and supportive group.</p>
<p>She initially went to summer CTY (Johns Hopkins) and found and loved the same comraderie; we hoped BS would provide the same environment, and it has.</p>
<p>It’s all about finding others you can share your self with, and grow together. Cool that it can happen in a high school.</p>
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<p>In one of his essays, DS wrote something like “I want to go to a school where my friends don’t say, “Dude, school’s over - why are you still talking about math?’”</p>
<p>For our son, the decision of where to apply, and ultimately, where to attend, came down to the peer culture at the school. We got the best “feel” for that at different schools by parsing through stats (average SSAT and SAT scores, % day vs boarders), the visit and interview (really critical for us), and closely following the websites and social media for different schools for many months.</p>