Private school question

[k3am]

Would you enroll in/consider a parochial school if you weren’t particularly religious?

I grew up in a Christian family, but it didn’t take and I am not religious. DH grew up in an anti-religion household - his mom could barely handle the fact that there were prayers said at her own mother’s funeral (grandma WAS religious, so I don’t see what the problem was).

We have a couple nearby private parochial schools offering in person instruction. The non-parochial school we had considered is inconvenient based on 2826 reasons. We are unlikely to return to in person learning this school year, and I question the 2021-2022 year as well. I’m also incredibly disheartened by our district and MANY of the teachers in it.

I don’t really have an issue with a parochial school. I think learning/studying the Bible for historical and literary context would be a plus, but I don’t want to end up having to go to church. DH has brushed parochial schools off as not being an option. I’m uncertain if the parochials would even take us at this point because of waiting lists, not being part of their congregation, etc.

I really have no idea if it’s even an option or feasible on so many levels, just noodling.

[erbear]

I would not. I have a real issue with Catholicism though so that probably colors it. My kids go to (and I teach at) a Quaker school so I guess it's "religious" but it feels different than a parochial school. There are spiritual elements (everyone attends Meeting for Worship every week) but it's not religious and most kids and teachers aren't Quaker (and many aren't Christian at all).

[mae0111]

I am a lapsed Catholic. Truth be told, I would like to leave the church, but DH has an issue with the idea of joining another church.

We found a Catholic school that was more about teaching general Christianity and being kind. DD2 will make her First Communion with her class if 15 (and not with 90 others at our local parish). DD1 is learning the sacraments and the commandments. They usually go to Mass once a month. There are definitely kids in the school that aren’t Catholic.

We were careful about the school that we chose. Another highly recommended school has strong ties to Opus Dei, which is very much not our thing. If you do a little research and just kind of listen, you can figure out which way the school leans. Our school has more of an independent feel than a Catholic one.

I would love to consider a Quaker school, but I don’t believe there are any options near us. Just Catholic, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and independent... and Catholic seem to be the most affordable.

ETA - I also make sure I have my kids think about the religion that they learn, and consider other ideas. They don’t take it as fact. I do the same with lots of other subjects.

[k3am]

Nov 16, 2020 21:54:04 GMT -5 erbear said:

I would not. I have a real issue with Catholicism though so that probably colors it. My kids go to (and I teach at) a Quaker school so I guess it's "religious" but it feels different than a parochial school. There are spiritual elements (everyone attends Meeting for Worship every week) but it's not religious and most kids and teachers aren't Quaker (and many aren't Christian at all).

I honestly don’t think there’s anything a religious school can throw at us that I would dislike more than I dislike our school district right now.

[mae0111]

Nov 16, 2020 22:26:19 GMT -5 k3am said:

Nov 16, 2020 21:54:04 GMT -5 erbear said:

I would not. I have a real issue with Catholicism though so that probably colors it. My kids go to (and I teach at) a Quaker school so I guess it's "religious" but it feels different than a parochial school. There are spiritual elements (everyone attends Meeting for Worship every week) but it's not religious and most kids and teachers aren't Quaker (and many aren't Christian at all).

I honestly don’t think there’s anything a religious school can throw at us that I would dislike more than I dislike our school district right now.

I would say that about 30% of the families at the school are there because they want a Catholic education. The rest either ran from a bad public school experience (us), or started in preschool for the convenient full day program with on-site before and aftercare and loved the sense of community at the school.

[sdlaura]

Not normally, but yes this year. We were planning to send our kids to catholic school before we dragged our feet and spots filled up. DH is an atheist and I’m agnostic. Mainly because it was less expensive.

Also apparently the independent schools around here are full of anti-vaxxers and the catholic schools required vaccinations like public - that’s especially important to me with a newborn at home.

I was glad that in person mass wouldn’t happen this year. I’m fine explaining to my kids that some people believe whatever, but no one knows for sure.

[shakinros]

Depends on the level of religious. I know of catholic schools where religious education is not strongly emphasized (due to the student population being really diverse and a desire to teach respect/tolerance) and catholic schools where it is highly emphasized. I would be fine with the former, not with the latter because we’re not religious.

DH would be fine with neither so it’s never been a real consideration for us.

I’d be all in for a Quaker school if we could afford it!

[waverly]

I would consider it yes.

DH is opposed, and we are not Catholic. DH also says the Catholic schools near us are not that good. And we do like our public schools so we are sticking it out. I hope, with the vaccine, we can return to 5 day a week school in August. This depends on vaccine rollout which is going to be a huge effort. However I am reasonably sure the school will mandate the vaccine for attendance.

But in your situation where you don’t like the public schools anyway, I see no reason not to explore your private school options.

I mention Catholic because those are the only religious schools in our town. We do also have a Montessori which I would have considered but it was the same price as the nanny.

[mommyatty]

I went to Catholic jr high and high school and wasn’t Catholic. I loved it. However, DH is really anti-religious so he would be a hard no. BFF taught in a Catholic elementary after having a Catholic K-12 education. Then she left the Church entirely. She had a really bad experience.

It’s interesting about the independent schools being anti-vax. My kids are in an independent school in part because they don’t allow religious or personal exemptions like public schools do. The only reason you can not be vaccinated is a doctor says it would be a health risk because of something like allergies to a component of the vaccine.

Of all religions, I identify most closely with the Quakers. Unfortunately the closest meeting to us is over an hour away. So obviously no Quaker school here.

[phdmomma]

We made the choice to send the kids to a catholic school about a month ago, because it was running in person. We are not catholic, but grew up in the faith before becoming protestants. About half of the kids in the school are catholic and the other half aren't. There is a lot of religion that they do. Like DD and her older assigned buddy prayed the rosary together in October. Or in K there were playing some sort of game, where the goal was to find baby Jesus. So there is a lot of religion. DS has come home with worksheets about Catholicism, which are part of the curriculum. They go to church every week in socially distanced pews are part of school. I'm okay with it. My issues with the catholic church stem from the patriarchy more than anything else, which is another story. But it is a lot of religion. One thing I would suggest doing is to see if you know anyone who attends. I called one of my colleagues who sends their kids there, and they gave me the scoop. I was concerned that it would potentially be a very conservative parish and school, but so far that doesn't seem to be the case. Many of the teachers have Black Lives Matter signs in their classrooms, and they also seem to spend a lot of time talking about social justice. Right now they are having a food drive, and the conversation around it that some people can't afford food, which is valuable. In short, be prepared for potentially a lot of religion, and decide how comfortable you would be with that.

[k3am]

waverly I think that’s the hard part. Until this all happened, we were “meh” on the district and in LOVE with our local public school. Our district is huge, but we bought our house primarily for the local schools. If we had really wanted to do private long-term, we would have had a MUCH wider housing market to look at.

Our district just has its head so far up it’s own ass. They’ve spent so much money trying to do stuff like be landlords, low income property developers, and now refusing to explore any viable reopening options that I feel their absolute last focus is on education. I think I’ve we had known where priorities were in 2018 (even before the issues COVID brought up), we’d have been much more likely to consider private.

[waverly]

k3am, I understand. Maybe it will help to think of it as temporary. Yes, it is movement for the kids to switch schools. However, if they go to private and stay there or if they go to private and then end up back at the public school- it is not the end of the world. Everyone is going through upheavals this year.

I never in a million years thought I would have a nanny who would be e-learning my children with the remote assistance of the public school. All we can do is take it one day or maybe one month at a time and keep re-evaluating.

[sandandsea]

Yes I would. I think the harder part for us is moving him away from his friends and our network we’ve built. But the level of education being provided is pretty bare bones and not great and I don’t want him missing 1-2 years of elementary school. So I think we are going to look into Kumon to beef it up. I never wanted to be that parent but our school district is really doing a disservice to the kids at this point.

[orval]

My ds has gone to Catholic school since K (now in 8th). While I am Catholic, my dh is not, I am not super religious. We are members of our local Catholic church and in non-Covid times attend mass a couple times a month and contribute financially. Since we are members, we get a Catholic discount. If you are not Catholic, you pay higher tuition.

My ds does have religion class - daily in middle school. Some is focused on prayers, Catholic religion -- most is focused on kindess, personal journaling etc. It is not overwhelmingly religious. I think you can take from it what you want like any religion. I also think it is good to get exposure to what other people believe, even if you don't yourself. It is a good learning experience and teaches tolerance of other ideas -- which we know are lacking right now!

[mae0111]

We left public school because we were dissatisfied. We didn't seek out a Catholic education. We were looking for a reasonably priced alternative to what we had.

Again, it's really important to understand how Catholic the school is. I'm seeing huge differences in the amount of religion taught just here on this board. My kids get about 15-20 mins a day, and in non-COVID times, their school day is about 15-20 minutes longer than the local public schools. I would have sent then to faith formation classes anyway, so I'm glad they're getting it. Other schools might have a lot more time than that. Non-COVID times meant Mass 1x per month - not once a week as other posters have mentioned - again, just varies across schools. Religion time is focused on religion. They also have class 1x week with the school counselor on bullying, self esteem, etc. So religion is different.

Their day is slightly shortened now to stagger coming and going, so they're sacrificing social studies and science a little. DD2 says they switch off weeks for those subjects. DD1 is getting social studies and science every week, but they're cut down a little. I'm totally fine with that. They're getting reading, spelling, and math every day - full blocks. Everything else can come later at their ages.

One other thing... schools like ours are trying their hardest to sniff out people that will leave after COVID. They don't want to accept people that won't become a part of their community. I really tried to sell the fact that we were excited to join the community when DD1 went through her interview for a new school last week. It was always our plan to send the kids to this other school when they got older. We really tried to stress that we were in a good situation currently, but that we were excited about the opportunities available at the new school. Just keep that in mind as you go through the process.

None of this is easy. The process and decisions can be difficult bordering on gut-wrenching (at least, that's how the process had been for me). Good luck!

[mustardseed2007]

I think it depends on your DH since he seems to be the one who is more anti-religion. I absolutely would send my kids to a catholic school if it was a good one, especially because they tend to be so much cheaper than other private schools. My DH has said no...and then he realized the price difference and switched to a maybe.

Yes they will almost always take you, assuming you like...don't say your kid can't go to chapel. Yes there are hard core religious schools out there that really try to manage the kids life, but there are many that have school uniforms, religion class, are headed buy a priest and provide a decent education. I think most catholic schools will fall into the latter category.

My kids go to a nondenominational christian school. No uniforms. They do pray and the whole school has a monthly bible verse, but they don't have religion classes. The head of the PTA is Muslim and multiple different religious or non religious faith people feel comfortable going there. If anything its sort of a small kind of progressive minded school and people that go here are more liberal than the people in our public school. It's kind of a unique dynamic. 

I grew up going to a Church of Christ school through 4th grade. I LOVED it as a kid, and it was a good education, but it was very religious. From a kids perspective, we had chapel daily and sang bible songs while walking in line, prayed often and had religious lessons starting from the beginning. There were no uniforms, BUT, when you hit 4th grade, girls weren't allowed to wear shorts or pants and we all started getting more scholarly lessons out of the King James bible. They also didn't teach you anything about evolution because they didn't believe in it.

So it's kind of all about what faith you're talking about.

We also bought our house for our neighborhood school and then didn't end up going. Periodically now I look around at houses in other areas (which would all be nicer homes) but moving out of our district is kind of scary to me in case we for some reason do need to go to public school at some point.

[librarychica]

It’s going to depend on the culture. How much religion seeps into other subjects? Is the students body relatively reflective of the surrounding area? I don’t want religion in my kids’ science class. I don’t want civics to be pushing conservative values (this was an issue in my public high school so it isn’t limited to private school). Personally I’ve no objection to an hour of religion class a day or weekly service. My youngest actually goes to a Jewish school, though we aren’t Jewish, and it’s great but I would not want my girls spending 7 hours a day submersed in evangelical purity culture at the Baptist school down the road — probably less of a thing in California.

[k3am]

Welp, I didn't bother talking to DH about it, but I did reach out to the closest Christian school to see if they even have openings. I'm sad.

[k3am]

And he is apparently not just against a religious school, but against any private school in general. SO. FML.

[edwardo123]

Both of my girls went to a Jewish center for daycare, followed by Catholic school. My oldest switched to public school in third grade. We plan a similar transition for our youngest. Both my husband and I were raised Catholic. I am agnostic, and he is a non-practicing Catholic.

I wish we could afford the private independent school in town, but it’s comparable to college tuition costs.

[phdmomma]

k3am, so if he is against everything that might be a possible solution, what are his plans? I would turn around and say that if you don't like anything I've come up with, this is now on you to figure out. And then make it his thing to deal with, and refuse to do anything with it. Either he will see the light, and go with what you want to do, or figure out a solution for himself.

[k3am]

phdmomma he is apparently okay with her distance learning because she’s “keeping up with the material” but ignoring the fact that it’s 1/3 of the material she should be doing (and that neighboring districts that have opened will be doing, let alone privates) and that her teacher doesn’t review her work or even have any idea of her reading level.

[waverly]

There will be gaps in everyone’s learning but your DD’s sounds like it might be greater. Would your DH consider a summer tutor or maybe some out school classes to fill the gaps?

In terms of reading level there are apps that will level her. Our school pays for them and they use Raz Kids which is the A-Z leveling system. Our school also uses Epic. I bet other apps do it too with their reading levels.

If you are concerned at all with reading my standard advice is 1. Phonics, if phonics is OK then 2. Read read read- make is as fun and exciting as possible. Tons of books from the library, everyone sit and read around the house, tie books and movies if shows in together. Kids aren’t going to be great readers doing 15 minutes a day, but if you raise a kid who thinks it is fun and chooses to do it then they will read a lot more and advance naturally- comprehension will come in time so I don’t worry about it unless it’s an issue.

I know my kids are a little behind because they didn’t show a lot of improvement from time period to time period (including the spring shutdown), but they are still testing pretty high. Did your school do a fall standardized test to see where she is at?


I know it doesn’t address the school/ teacher issue. Just throwing out some possible ideas.

[k3am]

waverly I actually think her reading is fine. I’m more concerned that the teacher has no grasp of her reading ability beyond a system generated test because she’s “never done reading with her.”

[hbomdiggity]

Yes and we did.

I was raised catholic light and went to parochial school. H was raised Baptist. I/We haven’t joined a church since married. DS isn’t baptized and has never attended mass in his life.

When deciding where to send DS pre covid, H was pretty adamant against all private schools. Our public district has some issues, but we had heard good things about our local school and registered DS in public.

Then covid hit and it really magnified issues with our district. While private schools are not exempt from our state covid limitations (which seems to be a huge misconception in our area), our local parochial school has done an amazing job of offering what they can for in person instruction and creating a community.

H wasn’t thrilled with the idea, but as someone said above, I asked him what his solution was. He had nothing. So we enrolled DS at the catholic school.

H has since admitted that he doesn’t know what we’d do without the parochial school.

That said, there are things that, if you are not ok with religion, I think would make some uncomfortable. DS came home the first week with a paper cross around his neck for learning the sign of the cross. There are worksheets from religion class. “Mom do you know who made those trees? God did.” K has only attended one in person mass so far (I can’t remember if it is normally weekly or monthly) and they asked that one parent attend with child to help them.