Private school vs online: my messy, unsponsored take after two years of watching both
Last weekend, we hosted my side of the family for my mom’s 60th birthday cookout. My 13-year-old Jake, who’s in 8th grade at our local physical private school, spent an hour ranting to my cousin Lila—same age, does full-time online private—about the Gatorade incident at last Friday’s pep rally. How student council snuck three big coolers of the blue stuff past the admin, dumped the whole thing on the principal right after he finished his speech about “end-of-year respect.” Jake was cackling, reenacting the way the principal’s white button-down turned completely see-through. Lila sat on our patio step, twisting the stem of her strawberry lemonade, and just nodded. She didn’t have a story to add. It wasn’t awkward exactly, but it stuck with me. That’s the moment I started actually thinking about whether the $18,000 a year we pour into Jake’s school is still worth it, when online school has gotten so much better than it was when we were kids.
Let me get the obvious stuff out first. We don’t come from old money or anything. That $18k is half my husband’s annual bonus, after taxes. We haven’t taken a real vacation that wasn’t camping at the state park three hours away in four years. My 2018 Honda has a crack down the entire passenger side windshield that I haven’t fixed because we’d rather put the $400 toward textbooks and uniform fees. Uniform fees! That’s the thing no one tells you about private school—$280 for three polos with the school logo stitched on the chest. I almost cried when I got the bill my first year. Lila’s online school charges a flat $7k a year, no hidden fees, and she can wear the same fuzzy penguin pajamas all day if she wants. Her grades are better than Jake’s, too. She tested into AP Bio this year, got an A first semester, while Jake scraped by with a C- in regular 8th grade chem. She’s been building an art portfolio for high school, puts three, four hours a day into painting that she’d never have if she was sitting through seven hours of class and an hour of homework every night. She won second place in a national teen art competition last month. That’s something that never would have happened at Jake’s school, even with their fancy art program—there just isn’t enough time in the day for that level of practice when you’re there from 8 to 3.
But then there’s the messy stuff that doesn’t show up on price comparison charts. Three months ago, Jake got in a stupid fight with his best friend, Cam, over a stupid thing—Cam called Jake’s new skateboard lame, Jake told Cam his new girlfriend was boring. They didn’t talk for a week. I was worried it was going to turn into one of those middle school grudges that lasts forever. Then one day at lunch, they accidentally sat at the same table, shared a bag of Cheetos, and made up before the bell rang. That wouldn’t have happened online. Lila tells me she has friends, too—they play Valorant together every night after class, text each other memes all day. But last fall she met one of her closest online friends at the mall an hour away, and they ended up walking around in circles for an hour, barely saying anything, and then went home and went right back to texting like nothing happened. Lila told me it felt weird talking to someone in person when you’re only used to typing to them. I get that.
I have this bad habit, I’ll admit. When I’m at book club with the other moms from the neighborhood, all of whom send their kids to private school, I find myself bragging a little about Jake’s school, like it’s a status symbol. Like paying more means I’m a better mom. But then I see Lila’s art, or I hear her talk about how she doesn’t have to deal with the mean girls who comment on your shoes in the bathroom line, and I think, what are we even doing? Why are we killing ourselves for this tuition? Then Jake comes home one day last month, talking about how he stayed after basketball practice, and his coach pulled him aside because Jake wanted to quit the team—everyone was making fun of him because he can’t dunk, can barely get off the ground. And the coach told him he was 5’2” when he was 13, couldn’t jump over a shoebox, and now he’s the best defender JV has. Now Jake’s the first man off the bench, and he’s so proud of himself he talks about it every night at dinner. That’s the thing you can’t get from a Zoom call, right? That awkward, messy, in-person encouragement that sticks with you.
Online school isn’t the punchline it was 10 years ago, that’s for sure. It’s caught up in every way that matters for academics, for flexibility, for kids who don’t fit into the traditional school box. I know a kid who got bullied so bad at our local public that his parents pulled him out, put him online, and his grades went from Ds to As, he’s actually happy now. But I also know a kid who did online for two years, never left the house except to go to the grocery store, became so anxious he couldn’t order his own food at a restaurant, so his parents put him in private physical school, and it turned him around.
I don’t have a clean answer. I still lie awake some nights, staring at the ceiling, calculating how much we’ve spent on private school in three years, wondering if we’d be better off putting that money toward college and putting Jake online. He’d probably have more time to build the stupid skate ramps he loves in the backyard. But then he leaves his reeking soccer cleats by the front door, or tells me about holding a girl’s hand at the spring dance for 10 whole seconds, and I think okay, maybe it’s worth the cracked windshield, the no-vacation years, the stupid $280 logo polos. No one is winning, really. Lila’s mom lies awake some nights too, wondering if she’s robbing Lila of all those stupid pep rally and Gatorade dump moments. We all just pick what fits our kid right now, and cross our fingers. That’s all any of us does, right? I don’t have a hot take or a perfect conclusion. Just two kids, both doing fine, both messy, both getting what they need out of very different things.
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