At least it does where our oldest is enrolled for next Fall. I think we've made the right choice. I've heard good things about this school and I want to do the best for our boys as we can. The real question is whether we will be able to afford it when they are both enrolled in the school-school programs. We could be in for quite the financial hit, but I should be back to work.

Anyway, what should we have looked for when choosing a private school system for entering our youngins?

Our "daycare" is a bit school like, as far as learning is concerned. The activities are virtually all centered around some sort of learning experience. Letters, numbers, animals, various fine motor skills, etc. TheBoy has been there since he was 7 months old. It was a brand new facility with the university, so it was cool, though a bit unnerving being involved with beginning of such a place.

They've already been through a ton of workers, and a director, but it's still been quite awesome!

His first daycare, we really didn't want to leave him there when he 'moved up' into the 1-year olds room. The workers in that room just didn't vibe well with us. His infant room worker was great and we were very comfortable with her, and her helpers (one is STILL our babysitter, and we actually got her to apply-and was hired- at the new place). But the older kids at the first place really didn't have a structured curriculum at all. They were just kind of allowed to play all day. That's not a horrible thing, but we wanted more 'learning' involved, since we didn't have a choice but to put him in daycare. So when the opportunity was there, we took it... and all for the same price, so it was a no brainer.

So to answer the question... ask about training/certification, including emergency training, for the staff. How often is it updated? What is the turn-around on staff, how long have they been there, or at least in the childcare industry? And what is a typical day/week like for a child of yours age? What's the plan for their day? How do they handle discipline? Time outs? What type of security is in place? (both places we've experienced have had keypad coded entrances)

And it's not too late to ask these questions. More than likely, the answers will make you feel better about the situation.

Hey Ben -

Concretin' certainly hit on all the most important stuff.

I think the staff is really the key thing. Since caregivers at these places tend to have very high turnover, I think it is also important to observe if the director of the school creates a good working environment for the employees (good working environment = happy workers = better child care).

Admittedly, you're not really going to have good insight into any of that until you've tried the place out for a month or two.

Also, although you didn't specifically ask about this...

I would warn you that the transition may be a little rough for you in the beginning. If you're anything like me, you'll be feeling pangs of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) as you drive away from the school every morning. Fight the FUD and remind yourself that school will do wonders for your child's social and language development.

Ben--

There may be a couple different questions embedded in here. I think Nick and Sean have given some great insights on picking a daycare. I think that may be a slightly different question from how to pick a private school.

Obviously, we're believers in private school education, and I have plenty of thoughts, but if you're more focused on daycare and preschool, I'll stick to that.

We're definitely looking at the school aspects. This seems to be a good way to assess both the school and our ability to handle tuition in the five figure range. By getting the school newsletter, we'll be able to keep tabs on the upper schools. By paying about a quarter of the full day tuition we'll have started building up to the full cost. But it's hard telling what we should expect from a program so large and influencial. (on our whole family)

Oh, maybe I misunderstood, I thought you were just looking for pre-school and/or daycare - I didn't realize you were already looking at the long term goals.

I don't have a clue about how to choose a private school from 1st grade and beyond.

However, I will say that for the 2-year old and 3-year-old set, the stage your boy is in right now, I don't think you should have very high expectations about what the "curriculum" will include (this is coming from someone who's wife teaches 4-5 year olds and whose mother is director of a pre-school). Mostly these early stages are focused on learning to get along with other kids, group art projects, group storytime, resolving conflict with other kids, etc...

If you want to give your son a headstart on hardcore stuff like letters and numbers and reading, that's really going to have to come from you and your wife over the next 2 years (certainly that is what we have been doing in our family).

Well, Duncan's at a stage where he'll learn things without trying. He picked up Sesame Street's Word of the Day one day last week, Humongous. I tried to get him to say it when he grabbed himself during a diaper change to no avail. But he was trying to use it at the cabin were were vacating this morning.

I'll give some examples...

I was reading through the brochure they send to prospective families. This is obviously the stuff they want you to make your decision from. They include music contest results, state championships in select sports, charitable acts performed by students, writing awards, art awards and so forth. They also, not surprisingly, make a big deal of the colleges and universities that graduates have attended. I also "Became a Fan" of their FB page, where they tout scholarships and acceptance into different schools. Well, none were really all that impressive. On the one hand, I find in that the obvious disappointment that we could spend over $300,000 on their K-12 schooling and only have an expectation to go to as good a school as I went to, not that my alma mater is fluff. On the other, it's nice to see that the school doesn't put their college list before the education fitting the students. But still, how would you feel if you spent $8000 for a year of school and your child went to a local 2 year school to get a tech degree. As parents, we shouldn't feel that way, but when you look at other families you can't help it, can you?

I'll just stop there. What should we be looking out that isn't on the brochure?

Oh, and for those with experience... Does the tuition include lunches when you get to the upper grades? It just came to mind sometime over the weekend.... probably when we were driving through a meal time.

Woaaahhh there Nellie!

I thought we were talking about pre-school and grade school, but now we're talking about which colleges are best?!

I think you need to let your kids grow up a little bit and then you can observe the personalities and figure out what type of school would be a good fit. It's not about what school is "best", but rather what school is the "best fit" for their personalities. I don't see how you could know that at this early stage.

I also do not think that a private school should be judged on where their graduates are going to college. I can't help but think that these marketing strategies are targeted solely at the parents' egos. Maybe happiness and life fulfillment are too hard to quantify? (or maybe they just doesn't sell as well).

But enrolling this early is important. There are very few seats for students, so once you're in the system, you have priority for staying in. Without having friends with kids higher up in the system, you have very little to go by other than the literature you get. If we had to decide between two or six, we'd have started this discernment before our kids were born, most likely.

Sure, it sounds like we're railroading our kids. We're just trying to make sure that our kids have the liberty to go whichever direction they felt led with the best support we can afford in our community. Unfortunately, in Fort Wayne and possibly across the state of Indiana, that's not the public school system. If we were to bank this money, we could be very well set for retirement AND paying for college for both boys. Instead we're investing in the foundation of their education, which we feel is the most important.

So, other than the brochure we've gotten and the web site and the few people we know who went there as kids, we don't have a lot to go on. Luckily for us, only big deficiencies would change our choice. But if we did have to make a choice between several schools, I realize how little I know about what to look for in a private school system. Since you'd be making this choice a 2 or 3 and they'll be in the system until they're 17 or 18 and changing your mind midway means probably going to a public school in a place where you don't like the public school system, you really do need to make the assessment of the whole system when you enroll at 2 or three. Compound that for two or three children since taking kids to multiple schools and keeping up with two calendars of school events. If it were only a year or two, I probably wouldn't pay that much attention. It's 15 years, though.

Now this is a topic I can go on and on about. As opposed to everything else on the site...

Anyway, my wife and I have pretty well lived and breathed, literally, private schools for our whole lives. I taught at one for 11 years before starting DL. We still live on the campus. My oldest attends the school.

So I believe in them. That said, we felt like the local public school was a really good fit for our kids, so we didn't/won't start them until 6th grade (so far).

(Maybe the following should be under a new thread called "Private School?")

I do think @sean is on to something. The great benefit when it comes to private schools is choice. Being able to shop for an environment that best suits your values as a family and your kid as an individual. What you are really paying for is the experience and the environment. You aren't paying for the result because college is both sort of a crapshoot, and sort of irrelevant when it comes to financial success or happiness.

You are paying for small class size and individual attention, teachers that are empowered to innovate and engage, frequent and easy communication with the school, a set of peers, a safe place to experience the turmoil of adolescence, and (if that is your thing) religious training or ethical instruction -- the ethos and mission of the school.

Read the mission statement closely. Sit in on classes. Talk to parents. The make a good guess.

In terms of cost, private schools find ways to nickel and dome you with extra food costs, charges for sports and for lessons, fees. Read the fine print carefully. (Just last night I was pretty mad because the dining hall turned away two of our son's friends because they hadn't paid the "dinner" fee.)

I could go on.

Brad put his kids in private school starting in K, so I'll tap him to weigh in.

Does the school offer admission tours? Most do. And this is a way to get at least a bit more information. Ask about student teacher ratio, but more importantly, average class size (you want as far under 18 as you can get). You want to find out about faculty tenure, how ling the avg. faculty member has been around, and how long the administration has been in place. Lots of turnover is not good.

If, in addition to a mission statement, they have something about core values, that can be scrutinized like a Shakespeare sonnet.

Believe me, Ben, I hear what you're saying about private schools. My wife is a public school teacher (currently), but we intend to send our kid to a private school. We have even started to think about moving to a different county in the Wash DC area that offers more geographically convenient choices for private schools.

So, I'm right there with you about the value of private schools (try not to get me started on a libertarian rant about school choice vouchers).

I think our opinions diverge on (a) the urgency at this state of the game and (b) the ultimate goal of a private education.

I'm just not buying into the idea that the opportunity to choose the right school is fleeting and that the time is now.

I don't know, sean. I think we're actually on the same page, but I think you're reading more into what I'm saying than what is there.

I don't have much to judge the school by, so when their college and university list was a major highlight of the brochure, I paid attention to it. I expected a prestigious list of Ivy League and International programs.I expected them to leave out the 2 year tech schools, to be honest. That they didn't was refreshing. That the list had very few schools (<5%) I wouldn't have managed to get into when I was a cut rate loser in high school with undiagnosed learning disabilities (at the time), was remarkable. It seems that the school's focus is much less on accomplishment than overall citizenship and learning. I like that. But $10-12k per year per kid does seems a bit high for that. Right now, rumor says that tuition is around $8k/year/kid, but I expect that to change quickly as the local economy picks up. Tuition for the 2 year old program is $2000 for two half days a week. You don't get to find out what the costs are until you pass their first interest assessment. So we'll find out as we need to know, I guess.

As for the urgency, I think it varies. There's a waiting list for some of the sessions of this program and it's probably full now. We waited too long to think seriously about this. It's possible that down the road, there won't be room for new students in the class. We'll see.

It would still be nice to know what to look for in the long term assessment of a school.

I think that this depends on the child. 3-4 year old is average but as long as the child is in a stimulating environment at home it is just fine to start preschool at 4 years old. Preschoolers learn through play so even if they are not involved in formal preschool education they are still learning and developing.



Preschool Long Beach

Preschool started on Tuesday with an hour and half of the kids. Today was an hour and a half with all of the kids (10). Next week begins the full 2.5 hours and snacks.

One shock was that when we went in for the parent preseason warmup meeting, they asked us five times to sign up for Carpool duty. I had no idea what they meant. I knew they weren't going to send me to another child's house to pick them up. Turns out it's just a pick up and drop off line. The Carpool helpers assist in getting the kids organized when their car shows up in line. That was confusing, but I get it now. Full Carpool line action on Tuesday. Wish me luck! I haven't volunteered to help because of my back problems. That may change in a month or two.

and now we're back to this topic in our house. My wife got into school hunting mode today.

We're interested in learning more about a school about an hour from where my wife would be working. We could live between them with no difficulty. The sticker shock hit, big time, though. Just a few dollars under $10k for a year of PreK through 8th grade. $15k, even, for high school. Class sizes are limited to 12 kids. Whether that's for the whole class (graduating vs Algebra) is our question. If there are only 48 kids in the High School, that's too few. But if there are 200, we probably need to get enrolled soon.

Luckily, we have many more to choose from where we're moving.