@fu Unfortunately, most families cannot home school because the adult(s) are too busy working and / or not educationally able. And that's even if they can meet their state's requirements for home schooling.
So if they cannot pay for private school, they usually have to rely upon public schools.
In my case, #sonOne got into the public continuation high school and only returned to the regular public high school for the last semester, so he could graduate. #sonTwo and #Daddy_A got into publicly-funded charter schools (and 2nd son also spent one school year doing a home school program through the continuation school when a lung infection prevented attendance). All three had suffered violence at the public schools (high school and middle schools) before getting into alternative programs, so I am definitely in favor of making alternatives available.
Backstory: #GS4 (not quite 2 years old) is learning to use the potty. Somehow, he missed and pooped on the floor, then picked it up and put it in the toilet. #sonTwo was cleaning the child and uttered the forbidden words.
When I heard about it, I seriously laughed out loud, because he told on me when I uttered the same words after bending a fingernail backwards while trying to squeeze his foot (plus fluffy wool socks) into his shoes.
I just see it as an example of where pay scales have not kept up with prices. Where it was once possible and common to support a family on one worker's income, that is no longer the case.
I think one thing that affected #sonTwo's choice of a campus was that we went to a "college fair" when he was in 8th or 9th grade and most of the schools weren't very interested in students who would not apply right away. The exception was my former CSU campus ... and he wanted to get out of my footprints.
lnxw48a1 (lnxw48a1@nu.federati.net)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Jan-2023 19:51:43 EST
lnxw48a1For the record, I don't believe the U.S. public school system is a drain on society. I believe it significantly underperforms its potential, but I also believe that in a world of single parenthood and two-job families, substantially all alternatives rely on its existence. I also believe that our public schools are too tightly managed from the national and state capitals, rather than locally.
And what does some pointy-headed educrat in Washington DC know about the needs of students in a much less urban part of SoCal? Nothing! But because of top-down rules, the local school districts cannot respond to local needs even if they wanted to (hint: they don't want to respond to local needs; they just want to pass the next district and campus administration staff pay raises).
#sonOne graduated from a public high school that was also a continuation school. He had gone there for the continuation program after repeated fights and a couple of medical issues in the main public high school, but once he caught up, he transferred to the regular high school program. (I knew the school wasn't responsive to medical issues, because I had a friend [now deceased] who had attended there while dealing with a life-threatening condition which eventually took his life.)
#sonTwo graduated from a charter school that is funded with public dollars. He also attended a medical home school program through the same continuation school that his older brother attended, but as soon as he recovered, he wanted out because that school had too much homework. Two of his elementary school friends moved out of state partly because of the poor quality of the public middle school he attended.
I remember one time, while he was on home schooling, we went to a local McDonald's for the day. We had breakfast and lunch there, while he did his schoolwork. There was a lady doing the same thing with her little boy. The toilets weren't all that clean, so when I needed to go, I left my kid there with the lady (and a long-time employee whom I knew) watching him, while I went to a nearby store. Later on, the lady needed to go, and I watched her kid while she went to the store. (That McD's now has a sign saying that their dining room is for up to 30 minutes use only.)
#Daddy_A graduated from a different charter school that is partially funded with public dollars. He went there after his public middle school experienced several race-related fights that spread from a nearby public high school.
Despite the public schools failing all three of them, the alternatives they used existed because we have public funding for schools. In each case, for different reasons, completely home schooling the child was not a realistic alternative, nor was getting into one of the area's paid and privately funded church schools. Even so, I did know a woman who was able to get grants and part-time on-campus work to send her three sons to a church school instead of the public middle school after her oldest got mononucleosis and the school demanded that he return to campus despite not having recovered.
I even used that ability when #sonTwo and #Daddy_A were teens. They'd be talking and I wasn't listening at all. Then one of them would say a word that piqued my interest, so I'd re-hear part of their conversation ... this time paying attention.