Family Man: School of Thought

By Gregory Keer

With the end of summer comes a new start in a new school, new friends and a time to say goodbye to old classmates.

Benjamin loved his school. He loved his teachers, friends, math challenges, science lab and reading groups. He loved soccer at PE and student council with the older kids.

So, we ripped him from everything he loved to put him elsewhere for third grade.

We struggled to avoid this decision for years, especially because Benjamin was thriving in his small private school, with the nurturing community and attentive administration. In the spring, though, a tuition increase emphasized that we were running far into the red.

We worried that if we stayed on the private school path, trying to make things equal for our second and third children, we faced a debilitating financial commitment before we even got to middle school.

Then we thought about how, in the last few years, we took on extra projects that made us more cash, but squeezed our family time. Anchoring ourselves to steep school expenses, despite the nobility of sacrificing for our children's education, could make us miserable.

As all of this weighed on us, we received news that Benjamin had been accepted to a public magnet school that we applied to as a backup. The school was known for being smaller than most and was rated one of the best in the city.

Still, conflicting feelings plagued us for weeks. Public education offered Benjamin exposure to a greater diversity of learning opportunities and people. But we teetered when we met with the head of the private school, who showed tremendous warmth as she gave us every possible reason to stay.

Wendy and I bent the ears of friends and spent late nights making checklists. We didn't want to screw up our seemingly well-adjusted child because of this one decision.

The deal breaker came from Benjamin himself. A while back, I asked him what he thought of possibly changing his academic scenery, and he burst into tears, wondering, "Will I ever see my friends again?"

This time, with the decision actually on the line, we took him to see the new school. We drove to the campus, surrounded by nice houses and old trees. He saw it was small, like his current school, and that it had a playground.

"There's no grass on the yard," he grumbled.