As we head towards the start of the school year and the kick off of the high school search season I want to share a bit of advice about touring and searching for good fit schools for your kids.
There are many programs and schools out there. There are also many people with lots of opinions about them and those opinions can be based on personal experience and/or rumor. I suggest you take those points of view with a grain of salt and focus on your research, your child and your gut about the places you check out. Keep in mind what’s best for your child isn’t necessarily what other people are looking for. It can be challenging for both parents and kids to hold onto that thought as the season progresses and so many have so much to say, which often can often subjective and negative.
A couple of quick personal notes:
Back in the day I was on the line for a Beacon open house (note: the last few years they’ve only offered zoom touring) and a mom was talking about how the day before police stormed the lunchroom at Brooklyn Tech and arrested several kids. I was PTA president of Tech back then and knew that wasn’t true, hadn’t happened, and I reiterated that to the parents who had been listening but who knows how many people took away the thought that Tech was a drug haven.
I also went into the process assuming Beacon was the place for both my kids: very creative, good size, variety of classes, wonderful reputation. But after touring both my kids said it wasn’t for them. We discovered they were both traditional learners and Beacon is a consortium school (different educational model that I’ll share more on later). If we hadn’t been on the tour and delved deeper into reality vs reputation, they could have ended up at a school that wasn’t a good fit for them.