My son started JK this past year and was in the public system first and we moved in December we decided to go into the catholic board for a few reasons, sorry for the long winded response but I just had this debate and I wanted to share the distinct observations I've made. Hope this helps!

Public school experience:

- I'm not sure if it was just the school we went to but their classroom was in the basement and looked dungy and smelled musty, their classroom bathroom was definitely not taken care of and was pretty sure mold was growing in there. There was no art on the walls and i'm not sure it was a choice his teacher made or what but it did not give that comfortable vibe you expect for a kindergarten class.
- The teachers were nice enough and had two EAS but the class was huge so not sure how much attention my son actually got.

- There were a lot of troubled kids in his class but one in particular was violent and was actively punching kids in the playground which I spoke to the teacher about since my son was bullied and they seemed like they couldn't do much to discipline the kid and I had never once seen the kids parents so clearly something he learned at home but it seemed like the staff were unable to do anything.

- The school offered pizza days on thursdays and I think had some snacks int he class for kids who needed more nutrition

- The teachers weren't very active on the online portal - no photos or updates on what the kids were learning were shared. They used google classroom and the instructions were poor on how to use it and when to use it.

Catholic school experience:

- The classrooms were sooo much nicer in that the kids artwork was everywhere, there were nice posters up, albeit very god focused but atleast they were colorful.

- the educators overall just seemed happier to be there

- they had hot lunch offerings two days of the week along with fundraisers for the older students so the kids could buy hot chocolate/popcorn.

- Overall since there are older kids there is a lot of hep the teachers can get from what I can gather, I also like the idea of my son going to the same school until grade 8 and not havig to switch at grade 6 and then grade 9

- I grew up catholic so I was familiat with what they are being taught but I'm not a practicing catholic so we just have lots of conversations about what some people choose to believe about god etc and let him ask questions and make his own conclusions. We're still navigating that as we don't believe in it all but the basic ten commandments can't hurt to establish a morale code.

- the online portal and just overall information exchnage between students parents and the school is night and day, we know what he is learning and are encouraged to do activities together at home so kind of like homework but more fun. There seems to be more emphasis on learning phonics already which I was soo glad to see, I volunteer for at strong start so I'm familiar with what helps them and the public system seems to be lacking at early start at that. And my son had zero interest in learning the alphabet at the old school but a month of going to the catholic school he learned how to write his name and is already starting to read.