if your child(ren) attend private school

[CloudBee]

And you have to drive them. How long is the drive?

We've spent much of the weekend researching schools and deciding which we'll tour in the coming months. I'm trying to decide what we should consider a reasonable distance for our family, assuming we remain in our current home for at least 5 more years.

[Deleted]

DS goes to a half day preschool, I drive him. It's 10-15 minutes away, depending on if I get stuck behind a slow car or tractor. We really loved a preschool 35 minutes away, it has an agricultural curriculum and everything. But that's too far for a 3 hour program, there wasn't enough time between dropoff and pickup for me to actually DO anything.

[origami]

~20 min now. Next year it will be 45min on a good day. We might move to be closer though. When I was in school my commute was ~40 min.

[mcfelix]

Well if our kids attend the private school where they will both be going to preschool (DS goes there now, DD starts in August) it's a 5 minute/less than 2 mile drive. It's the second closest private school to our house. We live in an area with a lot of private schools relatively nearby. Our neighbors send their daughter to the school less than a mile away, but their son goes to a school about 10-15 mins away.

[sunshineandpinot]

Not private but public charter; so not our neighborhood school and no school buses. Omg I miss the school bus!
We drive abt 9 miles. It's an easy drive- straight shot down the highway and we carpool so its shared. The traffic can be a nightmare. I have a flexible job so we can make it work but I know it has been really difficult for other parents.

[orval]

We drive about 25 - 30 minutes depending on traffic to Catholic elementary school. My husband drops off on the way to work, I pick up. The biggest issue is when I volunteer in the middle of school day -- sometimes I drive home for an hour before I leave to go back and pick up. But if I stayed, I would have to kill 2 hours around school, if that makes sense.

[h]

5-10 minutes. It's just under 2 miles away on mostly residential roads with no traffic. We knew we would use the school when we bought our house and planned around it.

The high school I want them to go to is 5 miles away and will be more like 10-15 minutes.

[Marmee]

Right now the elementary/middle school is right around a mile away and all residential between so it's like 5min drive.

All the High Schools that we are considering are between 35-60min away.  In part that is a traffic issue because we are in the middle of the city and virtually every private HS is in the suburbs or outer city.

[happyday]

It's 14 miles from us, but takes about 35 minutes to drive to/from our house.

[brooklyn]

When we lived in GA my dad drove me to school about an hour away (we lived in a suburb, and my dad worked in Atlanta and the school was on his way to work)

We were all happy to move back to nyc where I could walk/train to school by myself. Schelpping kids around sounds like a nightmare!

[ilikedonuts]

5 minutes for their Catholic school. If they went non Catholic private, our choices range from 12 minutes to 20 minutes.

[holly116]

We live in a incredibly dense area for catholic schools. The school the kids will attend k-8 is less than a mile away. 2 minute drive, 15 minute walk. If we didn't love it, there are four other Catholic elementaries within a 5 mile radius.

The preschool DD attended and ds1 attended last year is at a different catholic elementary. It's maybe 3 miles but takes 12-14 minutes due to the fact that we have to pass an interstate exit that has a shopping center, university, hospital and associated medical offices. So we sit at several traffic lights over and over again, slowly driving me insane.

There are a few high school options, all about 15-18 minutes from our house.

[dulcemariamar]

Right now we are looking at schools that are about 10 minutes away.

[mcfelix]

Jun 12, 2016 8:45:30 GMT -5 brooklyn said:

When we lived in GA my dad drove me to school about an hour away (we lived in a suburb, and my dad worked in Atlanta and the school was on his way to work)

We were all happy to move back to nyc where I could walk/train to school by myself. Schelpping kids around sounds like a nightmare!

same here(except a shorter drive for us)! We lived in stone mountain and my school was in Atlanta, so my dad took me in his way to work. On Fridays, we would stop at McDonald's for breakfast. For high school, I was bussed and it took about 45 minutes.

[cricketwife]

If we do private, it's because I work there so the commute doesn't really apply to your situation. I would say most families live 10-20 minutes away. Some live much farther, but they are definietly the exceptions.

[Deleted]

He will go to catholic school in the fall it's 15 mins away. There is one 10 minutes away but I didn't like that one as much. I toured a Christian school 20 mins away without traffic so mornings would be like 30 mins away. The distance and that it was double the price made the decision for me.

Growing up my Catholic grade school was 3 blocks away. My high school was 20 minutes.

[kangaroo11]

It's 17 miles away, which takes about 45 minutes in the morning. She's only in preschool there for 2 more years and will go to public school walking distance from the house. I can't imagine 6 more years of driving that traffic...

[Cicero]

It's 2.5 miles away but between traffic and the horrendous state of the road it takes a while to get there. Under normal conditions it's a 15-20 minute drive. After it has rained it's more like 30 because you have to drive through many places of 1-2 foot standing water.

[mlvmd]

DS1 goes to public right now which is 2.5 blocks away. The private school we are considering is about three blocks away. We'll probably go there instead of public middle school which is about a mile away.

For high school the private one we want is around 5 miles away, but my work is on the way so I could take him. The public high school is around 3 miles away.

[cjeanette]

My kids aren't private but a fair amount in my neighborhood are. We have kids that travel 10-15 minutes to catholic schools in our district area and we have kids who travel 30 minutes to secular and catholic privates all the way in KCMO proper. I suppose they figure they would be willing to make that commute for a job why not to drive a child to the school they feel is the best fit.

[h]

DS1 has a couple of classmates that drive 20-25 minutes from the suburbs for school, but the majority of the kids are within a 10-15 minute drive. Quite a few live in the same neighborhood as the school and can walk or bike. When he started kinder, there were a few more kids who lived 20+ minutes away but have since moved much closer to school.

I didn't have any friends who lived more than 15 minutes away when I was in private school. There was one kid in my class who commuted like an hour from an outlying town, but the commute was apparently so bad that his parents bought a little house by school and just let him live there alone during the week for his junior and senior years. Which seems so bizarre now.

[leonard131]

The two we are looking at are about 5 minutes away. One M could walk to and from H's office.

[frlcb]

5 minutes. There are a ton of good private schools in my city and we are lucky ours is so close to us.

[charlotteandwilbur]

As a kid I commuted 30 minutes, without traffic or bad weather. It was not ideal, especially in high school when I frequently did not get home until 7 or 7:30. But I live in the same city as Marmee, and there just aren't many options in the city itself. Many of my friends had similar commutes (in opposite directions-- so I was frequently driving up to an hour to get to a friend's house.)

We may move if our neighborhood schools don't work out for my own kids.

[auntie]

PA has parity for private/parochial busing. My district will bus 10 miles outside their borders.

DS attended a special reading school 12 miles away. It was generally a 45 minute drive if it was just him; an hour when we carpooled or if there was some construction on any of the back roads I took. And then 45 minutes home. Half days sucked and they had at least one a week.

[runblondie26]

Jun 12, 2016 8:07:15 GMT -5 CloudBee said:

And you have to drive them. How long is the drive?

We've spent much of the weekend researching schools and deciding which we'll tour in the coming months. I'm trying to decide what we should consider a reasonable distance for our family, assuming we remain in our current home for at least 5 more years.

It added an extra 45 minutes each way to my already 1+ hour commute. It's actually made a huge QOL impact, and I'm so happy now that school is over. I've done this for 2 years and would seriously lose my mind if I had to do it going forward.

We're moving and will be within walking distance of her school next year.

[ewall]

Currently at our church's daycare, but DS will attend private school there as well. It is less than 10 minutes away on surface streets. Unfortunately not walkable because we live on the side of a mountain overlooking the town.

[littlemermaid]

My daughter's school is approximately 20 minutes away(K-8). My son's high school is 30-40 minutes away depending on traffic.

[greycat]

Not currently an issue for us although I would consider a private high school within a 30min drive.

SIL's kids attend a school that is a 10 min drive from their house. Bussing is available but she drives then.

BIL's son attend a school that is 5 min away and rides the bus.

One of my coworkers sends his kids to schools in a city approx a 1hr drive from their house. I believe his wife drives them.

[blueberry10]

10 minutes away, but less than a minute away from daycare, which is how DD gets there and back for preschool. They have their own bus system for when the kids are older/full-day.