Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Private School with Religious Affiliation?

I hope I don't offend anyone, but I don't know where else to go with this question.

Some Background: In our city, none of the public schools will allow early entrance to Kdgn under any circumstances. However, if a student attends a private Kdgn, he/she can transfer to a public school as a first grader the following year.

DH and I always believed in public schools, but had a terrible experience with our ODD, who is HG. The public school had a rough time meeting her needs and refused to grade skip. Now our YDD barely misses the Kdgn. cutoff and is HG. It seems the logical way for us to avoid (at least in the short term) major school issues for YDD is early K entrance.

However, all of the private schools are very pricey.... So, can you tell I'm nervous about asking my question?...

We do not attend church regularly and would consider ourselves Unitarian. However, it would be a fraction of the cost to send YDD to a Lutheran school nearby. Has anyone done something similar? Do you feel like second-class citizens since you don't "belong" to the church? Is this a crazy thing to consider?

I don't have personal experience with this, but I've known a couple of families who've sent their kids to a private school affiliated with a church to which they didn't belong. Sometimes, even a different religion altogether. So, I don't think it's a totally crazy thing to consider.

I would imagine that as long as the tuition is paid, they're not going to turn people away simply because they don't belong to the church.

Of course, this opinion is only worth what you paid for it .

I can't answer for the situation in the US but in Australia it's very common to send children to either a private or independent religious school (the vast majority of private and independent schools here are faith based) without having any affiliation with that faith. I personally know quite a large number of parents that have done this with no adverse consequences. As JDAx3 has stated, in most cases it isn't an issue as long as the fees are paid, keeping in mind that the children are expected to practice and participate in the fundamentals of the given religion, at least during school hours.

I understand where you're coming from and from a personal perspective I would ask myself this question, and most likely other parents (carefully chosen so as not to offend), amongst all the others.

We have a variety of this problem, in that in the UK we have an established church (state schools have by law to have a mainly Christian assembly) and for historical reasons practically all private schools are also Christian (and are often behind with the recognising that not all their students are from Christian families, to boot). We're secular humanists and atheists. So we were pretty much always going to have to send DS to a school that would teach a religion we don't share. We dislike it, but not quite enough to homeschool just to get out of it, that being the only alternative! And DS is precocious in his consideration of such issues, and now more than capable of enjoying Bible stories, thinking about the moral and ethical aspects of what he's being told, while being quite clear that people believe different things. I was actually more concerned about his taking part in the nursery Nativity play (singing "Jesus is Lord" etc.) when he was too young to have completely sorted out fact, fiction, and people believing different things.

Of course our disadvantage of having no alternative is also an advantage: many people in the UK are in the same position and schools have to expect it. In your situation, TBH, I think I'd be asking the school. Nicely, of course, e.g. ask the head "we think your school is fantastic, and we think our DD would benefit from learning about Lutheranism, but we have to say that we aren't Lutherans ourselves. Is that a problem for you?" Point is that if you've asked "officially" and been told it's fine, it's easier to feel entitled to be there than if you just keep quiet and wonder, and if by any chance the school really doesn't want non-Lutherans as parents, you're probably better off knowing that and not sending your DD there!

Wannabe,

My children attended a Catholic School for one year. Not only did they allow earlier entrance into K they actually approached me after the first two weeks of first grade for DS to say they wanted to grade skip him to second! We moved and did not continue there but the public schools did honor his grade skip so for us the Catholic school was a great thing. There was no "second class" citizen feel to not being Catholic and the PTO was open and friendly to me as a parent as well.
Of course all schools are different regardless of affiliations etc. and perhaps you can find some other non-Lutheran parents to see what their experiences have been.
Good Luck!

Breakaway

DD went to a private Catholic school of preschool-1st grade. They allowed for early Kindergarten as well which our public school gave us a hard time about. We are not Catholic and never felt out of place. In fact, the school was so well regarded DDs class consisted children from many different faiths. She did have religion class twice a week and they attended mass every so often, but that was fine with us. I would talk to the school to see if they have other non-catholic families that attend and how big a role religion is at the school. I do know of another school in our area that has a division of church member families vs. others, which has created some friction in the school, so it may be an issue at other schools. HTH

Jen

My dd's school also haa a religious bent. The say they are non-sectarian. They do pray before lunch and have a weekly chapel. We have been a little wary of this but having attended some of the chapels, I find it pretty inoffensive. I think the school is trying to be inclusive even if our own religious practices are not recognized. Its not the battle we want to fight. The differences between school chapel and our church's doctrine gives us something to talk about with dd7 at dinner. For us, I think its good for her to realize mom and dad sometimes have different options from her school. I might be more concernted about this if the school chapel dealt with Jesus or salvation, but it doesn't. (The kids talk about this stuff in ways that wig me out, but I guess they must do that everywhere.)

Chrys

We are also Unitarian. I know a number of families from our church who've chose to send their children to various religiously affiliated schools in the area. In many cases, they've made the choice for academic reasons. We are in a urban, liberal area so the schools they've chose seem welcoming. The private school we were most seriously looking at our is our local Quaker school (Friends), which is especially known to be welcoming to everyone and the "chapel" they do is very simple.

I personally had a very bad elementary school experience at a small, very old fashioned Catholic school (I was raised Catholic), so I personally refused to even tour them when we were looking at schools. That being said, I know several families that had to pull out of local Catholic schools for academic reasons. It just depends on the school!

Good luck!

This is something that I do have experience with

My husband and I are not religious although we have looked into a Unitarian church in town. The public school that DS was assigned to ranks very low on test scores and from what I've heard is not a great school so we looked into private schools. We picked a Catholic school that seemed like it would work well for him. I got my first inkling of bad things to come when on his first day I overhead a kid asking the principal why it was raining outside and he said because God wants it to rain. I knew my son would question that to no end.

He didn't do well in that school and their attitude was because it was a private school they could kick him out at any time and didn't have to put up with his differences. When he started questioning God about the second week I was really nervous but luckily I convinced him to not talk about that at school. I knew that would cause even more problems. We weren't required to attend church there or anything like that but in the upper grades I think it's a requirement. It was a bad experience for all of us so I put him in a public Montessori for this year.

That being said I'm considering a private Episcopalian school for this coming year. They seem to encourage grade skips for kids that need them and they don't seem to focus on religion as much as the Catholic school did. I think that in my case I can overlook the religion aspect if the school is a good fit.

How do you feel about the religious aspect of it? I want DS to learn about lots of different religions so when he's older he can decide what he believes but I don't want him to be forced to believe a certain thing because he attends a certain school.

Also, if you put your kid in a private school and don't like it will the public school accept him into 1st next year?

99% of the private schools in my state have a religious affiliation, which is one of the reasons we opted not to send DS (or DD for that matter). They do attend church regularly (with my parents), but I felt that *I* would have issues - yes, sad, but very true.

Anyway, there are students who do attend these private schools that have different or non-religious backgrounds, though I live in the Bible Belt, so they are rare. But I don't think that there is anything wrong with putting your child in one.

Also, I don't know where you live, but some states do not have early entrance to K, but have a grade acceleration process once they start K. DS6 was lucky enough to be a part of this "highly secretive" process.