Is Private School Worth It?
Sometimes I wonder if old Jack is an idiot or a fox in disguise. Every year I write about the struggle to keep the kids in private school. Every year I spend time talking about the pros and cons and wonder how I have managed to do it for as long as I have.
Tuition Woes- Or Tuition, Tuition, Tuition
The Day School Dilemma- Paying For Private School
Paying For Private School- Part II
Private School Woes
What Should Children Learn in School?
Private School Blues & What is a High IQ Worth Anyway
And here I face my arch nemesis, one more time. “Hello tuition, so we meet again.” The thing is that this time around I think that the supervillain might actually win. Every year I have managed to pull a rabbit out of my hat. Somehow, some way I have managed to find a way to make it work.
I should be proud of my accomplishment, but instead I feel sad and foolish. I joined the rat race and played the game. Like a hamster on a wheel I ran and ran and now I am spent and broken down. And I have to ask myself how I ended up in this place.
The unspoken truth is that I feel like I have failed. And if you are one of the 17 long time readers you know that I believe that it is important to teach children how to lose and to let them fail. You know that I consider it to be critical because they have to learn coping skills.
Jack has failed. I own that.
I did it, I said it and now I am moving beyond it. I don’t need to provide a laundry list of all the things that I did wrong anymore than I need one that lists what I did right. I am one of millions of people who got caught in the net of this terrible economy. A perfect storm of epic proportions has helped to create this mess.
I keep saying that 2010 is the year of Jack and I will die before I let it be otherwise. Now the only question is how to make that happen.
So here we are, facing the question of what to do about school. The local public school remains unacceptable. I don’t believe that it will provide the children with the education that they deserve. So now what? What options are available?
Moving might be an option. It is something that has been on the back of my mind for a long time. It hasn’t happened because it seemed to require too many sacrifices.
1) Leaving the state- I have applied for positions outside of here, but haven’t been hired. It seemed foolish to move to a new place without a job.
2) Moving within the city- Up to now hasn’t been affordable. The increase in mortgage has been more than the cost of the private school.
3) Give up the house- Well, thought about this a bunch of times and it never seemed like a good option. But I am starting to reconsider.
I am not totally giving up on the school but I am not relying on it either. I can’t. I am facing the reality of the situation. My children will be very unhappy about leaving. It won’t be easy to tell them, but I am not going to let that keep a bad situation going.
However, if I do figure out how to pull that rabbit out of my hate again they can stay. It is not a great plan, especially as it applies to the long term. But sometimes you have to adopt short term measures to get to that long term place.
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