Because I’m also a teacher who has many, many qualms about not just the public schools specifically, but schools in general. It’s a case of knowing enough to be worried, while most of my political stripe don’t know as much. We aren’t living the dream of good public education and I’m not willing to sacrifice my children’s realities to my political ideals.

Race and school is a vital factor too–ie: Black children underperforming and having low expectations from schools and being asssessed as problems early on, on the basis of race.

We can’t afford the kind of progressive private school I’d insist on and homeschooling means we never have to consider school districts in moves which is a factor speedily becoming uber relevant for us.

I grew up down the road from where you live, in one of the snootiest suburbs. The public school education education I got was fantastic. My classmates? Not so much. All white, upper middle class and so damn snooty to anyone who was remotely different.

Your hood is a little more diverse than that place is, it seems. Maybe even a lot more diverse. For us, if we had access to a school as good as the one I went to, minus a good chunk of the snooty-ness, that’s where my daughter would go.

Unfortunately, we’ve learned that our neighborhood school is 70% Spanish-speaking and the focus of the school is on improving the students’ English skils.

Which is totally great as far as diversity goes and absolutely serves the needs of most of the neighborhood, but sucks for my kid. She’s a native English speaker without the language challenges that her peers in our neighborhood have.

Given that, she’ll most likely be attending a private school 20 miles north of us that teaches Chinese and English.

But, if we were in your situation, we’d probably lean towards the local schools, at least through elementary.

I really think that the benefits around middle school age would be great.