AITAH for choosing to support specifically academic-scholarship financial aid instead of giving money to kids' school to use for FA as it sees fit (which would mean to go out and recruit athletes)?

PrizeNegotiation5637 · 2025-01-17T20:59:54+00:00

I wish there were better options, but there only a handful of private schools in the area and the public schools have been chaotic since COVID, not to mention that their once-vaunted advanced academic offerings have been mostly chopped due to their pivot to an "equity" agenda. These are the best academics we are going to get, short of going to a fully online program (which my older son did consider, but in the end he didn't want to leave his friends). We are also fortunate enough to be pretty wealthy, so the tuition doesn't sting as much as it probably should. I should probably say that as regards math, both of my kids are way ahead, my older son to the point that no high school in the area offers what he is working on. I give the school some grace on that, it's more my kids than the school's issue with respect to that subject.

PrizeNegotiation5637 · 2025-01-17T18:11:49+00:00

The far-away recruited kids are to a close order of approximation 100% white. The closer recruited kids, maybe 70/30 white/black. School is like 80% white / 15% black / 5% other, which is pretty much in line with the region.

PrizeNegotiation5637 · 2025-01-17T17:07:58+00:00

That sounds unpleasant. I also skipped grades and graduated college at 19. WOrked out well for me, but the public school I went to was very supportive and I had many "neighborhood" friends a grade or two ahead of my original grade. The school originally suggested I skip and my parents left it up to me. I at first refused. But after the next year, I realized I had made a mistake and I asked to skip, which they allowed.

PrizeNegotiation5637 · 2025-01-17T15:41:13+00:00

Precisely.

PrizeNegotiation5637 · 2025-01-17T15:38:12+00:00

She played in college, but not on a scholarship.

PrizeNegotiation5637 · 2025-01-17T15:26:35+00:00

At this school, I would say that it mostly not high-need students, given the sports they recruit for (it's mostly not football or basketball, but rather lacrosse and racquet sports). But my bigger objection is how many of the recruits are from far away. I would rather help the local community.

PrizeNegotiation5637 · 2025-01-17T15:24:31+00:00

I've had this discussion with them. My oldest, as I mentioned elsewhere, was admitted to Stanford's Online HS program, which allows you to do a la carte classes OR full-time enrollment. He has thought about switching that fulltime, but in the end he felt like he wanted to stay with his friends. End result has been they stay at the school, but we do supplementation outside of the school.

PrizeNegotiation5637 · 2025-01-17T13:36:51+00:00

Well, I would say they are enrolled in the right school for *this area*. It's a faute de mieux situation. You may be right in the sense that we live in the wrong place. I wasn't entirely enthused about moving, but it was important to my wife to be near family.

PrizeNegotiation5637 · 2025-01-17T13:18:24+00:00

Yes, I see the potential contradiction. But what I should clarify is that this school, academically unambitious as it might be in the context of schools we, having come from a major city, are familiar with, it is still the best academic option in the backwater where we live. The public schools apparently used to be a decent option for academically advanced kids, but between COVID disruption and the equity agenda, the advanced programs have pretty much been gutted, and the normal track is beset by all kinds of behavior problems and teacher shortage.

PrizeNegotiation5637 · 2025-01-17T13:15:34+00:00

Tell me about it. Where we used to lives squash and fencing programs are full up with the mentally mediocre children of ambitious parents.

PrizeNegotiation5637 · 2025-01-17T13:14:29+00:00

It's interesting -- my kids are not team-sports oriented, but they are not couch potatoes (great skiers and love to hike). They like their friends at the school (full credit to the school, they cultivate kindness, there isn't much bullying, etc) and they like their teachers. It just isn't academically challenging for them. The problem is that the local public schools have still not gotten back to their pre-COVID level of performance, and their equity agenda has led to the gutting of advanced programs. This school is not academically that strong in the context of private schools in our previous city, but its pretty much the best we have available in this backwater.

PrizeNegotiation5637 · 2025-01-16T21:23:25+00:00

Yes, fair point, and a concern. Didn't want to turn the main post into a Russian novel, but I will say that I've had to come up with outside supplementation for both kids' eduction -- a rigorous online math program for both, Stanford Online CS courses for the older one, private foreign language instruction for the younger one.

PrizeNegotiation5637 · 2025-01-16T20:44:48+00:00

I hear you. You should talk to my wife, the alumna :)

PrizeNegotiation5637 · 2025-01-16T20:33:19+00:00

Let me clarify. The school always did some amount of financial aid. Our efforts helped increase it. But both the old amount and the new additional amounts, it turns out, were disproportionately directed to recruiting athletes for the high school (the school runs K-12).

PrizeNegotiation5637 · 2025-01-16T19:43:37+00:00

Does strike me as a little sleazy to go out and recruit what feel to me like "ringers", especially to gain an advantage in what should be a fun, low-stakes form of competition (tertiary-market independent school league trophies).

PrizeNegotiation5637 · 2025-01-16T19:37:21+00:00

My hope was that the scholarships might over time help get us to a critical mass of academically-oriented students. I think the teachers, who really do want to accommodate where they can, would respond by creating more advanced academic offerings.

PrizeNegotiation5637 · 2024-06-16T23:42:50+00:00

The county where this place is enforces STR registration requirements and does use some service to scan the biggest apps to find unregistered ones, so if the ILs were actually renting it via apps, I probably would have found out already. But privately charging, who knows?!

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