Quote:
Originally Posted by bizaro86
The problem is, I don't think you're likely getting any dimes from that policy change, which makes it more like cutting off your nose to spite your face.
I'm pretty confident a huge percentage of kids would flow back to the public system in that situation, probably close to 70% of them. And the ones most likely to end up back in the public system are the most expensive kids, the ones whose parents are struggling to pay for private education because their kids have complex needs, autism, dyslexia, etc.
Even in that situation where you break even on the operating funding, you now have to find schools for tens of thousands of new kids and pay for those. On top of the huge number of schools we're already short.
I have a really close friend that has a kid with severe dyslexia that was basically ignored in public school. He's at a private school (and they are legit struggling to pay for it) and doing better but still not great. If his tuition goes up 8k per year back to the community school in gen pop he goes.
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I can't prove any percentage, but 70% seems wildly dramatic.
If all those kids who are in private schools need more support when going back to the public schools, then wouldn't we have affluent families with the ability to lobby their UCP buddies for more funding?
With your proposed 70% of the kids returning to the public side, then all of a sudden you're going to have mostly empty private schools. The leftover private kids will consolidate and the empty seats/buildings left behind can get absorbed into the public system. I don't think the logistics of this would be a major hurdle to overcome. Not saying it would be easy, but I feel it would be possible. I liken it to the empty office towers downtown being converted to condos. Erase a surplus by having a need absorb it.
Sorry to hear that your friend has those struggles, I know these are real kids with real problems and no kid should be left behind. Can you imagine how many kids in the public system face similar scenarios without their parents ability to afford smaller class sizes and more personalized help? Maybe with a properly funded public system kids like this wouldn't have to pay gobs of money to get their needs met by private institutions.
Private schools = Private funding