Reply #56: And if a nice public school isn't in my district, then what?

[KossackRealityCheck]

Childhood goes very quickly and there's only one shot at it. Very few parents are going to sacrifice their children's well being and future on the principal of eventually achieving good public schools for all when the time frame for educating your own kid is about 10 years.

We used every trick imaginable to get our kid out of the sucky local public school into better public schools in other parts of the city, including my SO's one woman sit in at the district superintendent's office.

One policy that should have unanimous support from parents, teachers and administrators, but surprisingly doesn't, is that every public school child has the right NOT to go to the local, zoned public school and has the right to go to any other public school. Shockingly, I've debated teachers on forums who think students should not be able to transfer out of bad schools into other public schools.

I don't get it -- it's like looking at school (as one parent I was discussing this with on another forum put it) as a form of prison from which there is no escape.