Can't believe we're actually doing this - Private School

[shanendoah]

Today I sent in the applications to get our girls in a private school for next year. We always figured we would only do this if the school had a different pedagogy - C is a big fan of the Waldorf schools, Montessori is big up here (though rarely goes past elementary), and there's a Sudbury school here, too. But we're not going with any of those. 

So why are we doing this?
The school is located near where I work. While I don't intend to stay in this particular job forever, I do hope to stay at the University long term. I could adjust my hours to work from 9-6 and bring the girls into school in the morning.
In addition, this school was designed for students on the autism spectrum, but their goal is to help those kids integrate into society, so they want "neuro-typical" kids, too. In fact, they want neuro-typical kids so badly that those students get a full tuition waiver. We would only have to pay activity and materials fees for each girl - $2,500/yr for Cupcake and $3,250/yr for Pop Tart. So that's less than $6,000/yr (for the next 3 years, before Pop Tart goes into high school when the activity fee will increase by another $750) to send both girls to a private school.

C and I toured the school on Monday. The classes are small to begin with, with 2 teachers per class and additional support for the students who need it. We also got to witness their ways of dealing with kid melt downs and helping kids figure out what they need to do to stop/prevent melt downs and were quite impressed.

Right now, the entire high school (9-12) has 18 students. They do expect that to go up by about 6/year, so when Pop Tart enters high school in 4 years, that would put 42 kids in the high school, with 60 kids by the time she graduates. While that means class sizes will be a little bigger than they are now, a 4 person Spanish course, or a 2 person Japanese course (where the students will also get to go read books to the kids in the Japanese immersion pre-school downstairs) is money.

They also have the connections that allow kids to participate in sports at their local high schools, so if Pop Tart wants to be on the swim team, she can do that at whatever high school we are districted for.


We didn't leave the school going OMG this is the best place ever, but it still has enough positives that we think the girls would really benefit. And at $500/month, essentially, we can make that happen.

Of course, we did miss their priority application deadline, so there's a possibility they wouldn't be admitted for next year, but we think that's small.

So yeah, private school. And that also means on our house hunt, we can stop worrying about school districts.





Formerly SK - I know you're in WA, but can't remember if you are in the Seattle area or not. I know you've been considering some alternate education for your boys, so feel free to PM me if you want more info about the school.

[TheHaitian]

If you can afford it ; why not!

Fingers crossed they get accepted

[busymom]

That sounds like a great option, Shanen!

Hopefully, now that's one less thing to worry about. 

[Deleted]

I don't want to dampen your spirits, but I wouldn't buy a house based on the idea that this is where they will finish school, at least until you've been there a year. I can see the potential for issues in such a small group that is weighted toward neuro a-typical kids. I think it sounds like something worth trying! I just would be cautious making decisions based on their enrollment until you've been there a while, at least...

[Malarky]

I'm not sure what kind of community/population you are coming from, so just ignore this if it in no way pertains.  

My kids went to a small, 40 kid per grade (2 classrooms) elementary school.  The smallest in town.  And it was fabulous.  They then moved on to middle school (there are two in town) where instead of being from one of two classrooms, there were 10 classrooms per grade.  And instead of distributing the kids from our school fairly evenly, there would be bunches together, with some scattered throughout.  My son ended up without anyone he went to elementary school with in any of his classes.  He wasn't the only kid this happened to.  So instead of having a network of familiar people in an unfamiliar environment, he was alone.  DD was a bit luckier, she ended up with a couple of kids she knew at least, even though they weren't friends.

DS would have definitely benefited from having some "knowns."  Ultimately, after his middle school experience, he chose to go to HS out of town.  

DD is much more social, and was able to better cope with losing her network. And creating a new one.  

My point is, how are your kids going to react to such a small environment?  While it may be great from an academic standpoint, will they have friends and activities where they live?  Will they eventually go on to a bigger school?  

DH is a product of private school education and one of his biggest complaints is that he wasn't really part of the community he grew up in.  To this day, he wishes he could have gone to public school.  

I went to a regional vocational technical school in another state (the only one available) so was willing to send DS to one even though most in our affluent suburb wouldn't dream of it.

Just some things to think about.  None of it may pertain to you at all.


 



 

[lexxy703]

Sorry, slightly OT, but is Cupcake new?  I remember Pop Tart but don't remember hearing about Cupcake.

I hope the school works out for them.  It sounds like it has a lot of positives.

[Deleted]

Is there any evaluation of how the school performs academically?

[giramomma]

We've been at our private school for 6 years, and we're a little over a third of the way through our tenure there.

I STILL apologize the we send our kids to private school.  Because we aren't like most of the peers.

But I can't wait for the public school system to get their stuff together. And I'm not willing drive 1 hour to work every day, plus then drive one hour to get my kids to the activities they are interested in because the bedroom communities don't offer the same amenities.

So, ultimately, it's been the best choice for us.

[CarolinaKat]

Mar 25, 2015 13:29:13 GMT -5 lexxy703 said:

Sorry, slightly OT, but is Cupcake new?  I remember Pop Tart but don't remember hearing about Cupcake.

I hope the school works out for them.  It sounds like it has a lot of positives.

Yes, Cupcake is relatively new. She's a couple of years younger than Poptart. Miniwheat has found a family that's a better fit for him

[lexxy703]

Mar 25, 2015 14:08:53 GMT -5 CarolinaKat said:

Mar 25, 2015 13:29:13 GMT -5 lexxy703 said:

Sorry, slightly OT, but is Cupcake new?  I remember Pop Tart but don't remember hearing about Cupcake.

I hope the school works out for them.  It sounds like it has a lot of positives.

Yes, Cupcake is relatively new. She's a couple of years younger than Poptart. Miniwheat has found a family that's a better fit for him

Thank you.  I knew Miniwheat was leaving but I missed Cupcake's arrival.

[Pants]

Shane - I'm not trying to shit on your parade here, but I would be very wary about putting your kids in that situation. When I was younger I ended up in a similar situation ("normal" kid in a school for "not normal" kids) and it was very damaging for me on a short-term basis. I lasted 1 year before my parents had to pull me because it was such a terrible fit and I was suffering. I definitely wouldn't buy a house based on the idea that this is the permanent solution to your education issues. 

[shanendoah]

Got really busy with a bunch of things happening at once. Let's see if I can address some of the concerns.

If it turned out to be a really bad fit, we would obviously pull the kids (or the kid, if only a bad fit for one) out. The majority of the areas we're looking at have excellent elementary and middle schools, it is their high schools that start falling down (which seems ridiculous considering the neighborhoods I'm looking at). That means that we would have 2-3 years (depending on if it was a middle school that only went through 8th or a junior high that went through 9th) to figure out a new plan for Pop Tart, if she were the one pulled out. We would have 6+ years to figure out a new plan for Cupcake.
But even so, the most likely neighborhoods for us to end up in also have good high schools. There are just a couple of neighborhoods we consider possibilities that do not.

We are only considering neighborhoods where it is safe for the kids to be out on the street playing with other kids. Pop Tart is excellent at making friends (we have seen this over and over again), so we have very few concerns about them being able to fit into the neighborhood or make friends with the other kids. (For the record, a number of the kids in our neighborhood that Pop Tart and Cupcake play with do not go to the same school as them.)

We also intend to keep the kids involved in community programs - swim lessons, gymnastics, etc., that will allow them to make friends with similar interests.

Yes, the school focuses on kids on the Autism spectrum. We visited the school. The majority of the kids are on the Aspergers/high functioning side, with just a few kids on the low functioning side. These kids are smart just not as socially adept. We were there during reading time, and the classes were pretty evenly divided between advanced reading and grade level reading groups, with one or two children in each class receiving special one on one attention from dedicated aides.
Like all high schools, they have a mix of kids attending competitive colleges, community colleges, or vocational schools. Unlike most schools, they have a dedicated transition counselor who makes recommendations and assists the child and family in making their choices based on actually knowing the child.

And while both of my girls are "neuro-typical", given their histories, they do both have some emotional and behavioral issues that we feel would be better handled in this environment. Every student is on an individualized educational plan, created at the beginning of the school year by the teacher, student, and parents. The goals created can be educational or behavioral. We believe this type of environment will be ideal for helping Cupcake get up to grade level. If we stay in a regular public school, she will absolutely need to be held back and repeat 1st grade (she should have repeated kindergarten, but I wasn't around for that decision). However, she is big for her age, already one of the biggest kids in her class, and putting her with kids a year younger (and therefore even smaller) creates concerns among every educator we have talked to, regarding self-esteem and the ability to fit in in her grade.
In this environment, she can be promoted to 2nd grade and work during the year closely with teachers and aids (along with the work we will do at home over the summer and during the school year) to get up to grade level. She is currently very insecure and frustrated by how far behind her peers she is, so being in a class where everyone is at different places in their learning, we hope will ease some of that frustration and allow her to succeed. She is a very verbal child, and seems actually quite smart, she just hasn't been in a stable enough environment with the supports needed to actually succeed at school.

We also believe that this environment will allow Pop Tart to achieve her full potential. As it is, she has a mental block against being smart, because cool/popular kids are not supposed to be smart. (Of course, she does not actually want to be a popular kid because in the movies, all popular kids are mean.) She wants to blend in and just be somewhere in the middle. In this school, no child is just able to blend in because the school population is not big enough. We hope that this will help remove some of her own, self-imposed barriers to learning.

No matter what, the girls will be in a new school next year. Pop Tart is looking forward to this as a number of her friends are all going to be in different schools next year, too (or at least that's what she said last night; it was the first we had heard of it).
I don't think Cupcake cares at this point. We are currently in her 3rd school in her two years of schooling, and next year she will be in her 4th school. She has not yet had time to make good friends at her current school (which she's only been in a little over a month), and in fact, appears to struggle a bit with making same age friends (she latches on to Pop Tart's friends). We are hoping a small, stable peer group at school will help her form those relationships.

As a note, to Sum Dum Gai, from your descriptions, I would not put your girls in this school, either. I very much doubt it would be a good fit for them, but for my girls, I think it may be.

And in a year and a half, when we would once again be considering a school change if this school doesn't work out, I expect to be in a very different spot financially. Currently, I've been back at work for less than 6 months after 9 months of unemployment, where we ate up a lot of our savings. C has only been done with college since the end of summer, so we've only had 2 quarters (arguably 3 with spring quarter starting next week) where we have not had his educational costs.
We are in the process of selling the rental condo, and I expect that we will sell the current house once we move out (though we could keep it as a rental, I just don't think we're leaning that way right now).

I never actually assume that everything will go according to plan. I just like to have a plan. And so for now, the plan is to move this summer and to enroll the girls in this school next fall. If things do not work out with that plan, we will adjust.


Oh, and if I missed a concern, repost or let me know, and I'll try to address.

[emma1420]

It sounds like it's potentially a really good fit for both of your girls.   I think there are advantages of very large schools and advantages of very small schools, and not every kid does well in both environments.   It sounds like you have really thought through the advantages and disadvantages of the decision.  

[cronewitch]

Will you tell the girls the other children are special needs? My great niece went to special preschool and one classmate had a brother was a typical peer in the class. She is in high school now and I met the typical boy at her brother's graduation, very nice boy told me jokes at the party. He got brain cancer so was special needs and died this winter, so I have a soft spot for the typical peers. My great nephew talked about him at his funeral, he is a volunteer with the special needs kids at the YMCA.

[shanendoah]

cronewitch - we will talk to them about it in an age appropriate fashion. Pop Tart is old enough to understand more, and we have already talked to her about it a little bit. With Cupcake, we will wait until we know for certain that this is what we are going to do, and then we'll start talking about it with her.

I feel like I saw a comment from @southernsusana last night that is no longer here. I just didn't have time to respond last night, though I did read it. I get that this may not be a good situation for all kids. It would not be a good situation for a number of kids I know. I think it will be a good fit for my girls. I think one thing that maybe I have not made clear enough is that they will NOT be the first or the only neuro-typical kids in the school. In the younger grades it really did seem that a full half (or more) of the kids were either neuro-typical or high functioning enough that the classroom ran like any other classroom, just with fewer students per teacher.
In the current high school (again, 18 students total in all 4 grades) the kids were more obviously on the autism spectrum, but that's not the peer group either of my girls will be in.

As for the concerns about what classes might be offered, I think there's actually more flexibility here than at a public school. At my high school, you could take Spanish. You could take French. I have to believe there was a German program, but I honestly don't remember anyone who took German or have any idea of who the German teacher might have been. That was it for languages. One high school in the area did teach Japanese, but only one, and if you didn't go to that school, you were out of luck.
This school is teaching the classes that its students want. They just hired a French teacher because a student is transferring from another school where he took French. Now, his parents are providing a little extra in the way of tuition in order to pay for this teacher, which isn't something I could do, but it does show the school is willing to pay attention to the wants and needs of it's student body.
As for concern that a school might not continue offering classes where there are only 2-4 students in them, in another environment, I would get that, but when you have 18 students total over 4 grades, having 4 students in a single language class is almost a quarter of your student body. 2 students is not a lot, but those could be the two at level 3 in the language and there are other kids at level 1, 2, or 4 (or whatever). So no, I don't have a concern about them cancelling some of the classes I saw.
Since they expect their high school population to grow by 6 students a year, meaning there will be 42 students by the time Pop Tart enters 9th grade, I expect the classes will have a few more people in them. But still, a language class with 10 students, instead of 30, allows for a lot more immersion.


Again, I know this would not be a good fit for a number of kids. I think it will be a good fit for mine. I may be wrong, but I cannot know one way or the other if we do not try it. And since I feel that the chances of good are greater than the chances of not good, we will try it, if we get in.

[happyhoix]

From the age of 11 through to high school I went to a very small school. My grade had about 8 kids and it was the biggest class in the school. There was one grade with only 1 kid.

There are advantages and disadvantages. There was one girl in our class that had behavioral issues (very dramatic, prone to outbursts and fights with the other kids) - and the 'mean' kids learned very quickly how to push her buttons. If she was in a school with a bigger population, where she wasn't in extremely close contact with the same kids 100% of the time, I don't think this would have happened, or not to that extent.  And I was one of those kids that march to their own drummer, kind of the science nerd/smart kid/artistic type. For the first year there was one other girl like me, but she left the next year, and after that, it was me in a class with 3 very girly girls who only wanted to discuss pop music, boy bands, clothes, make up and boys. I stuck out like a sore thumb. I didn't have any close friends again until HS, when I went to a bigger school (99 kids in my graduating class) and found some other nerd girls/guys to hang out with.

I would just play it by ear. It's easy to tell if your kids are thriving or miserable, and hopefully this will be a place for them to bloom. If not, you have other options.
 

[Formerly SK]

I'm not sure I understand the big attraction of an IEP.  I have one kid with one.  IMO they are just a lot of paperwork.  Sure, if you want quantifiable measurements of something like how well/often a kid can do X then sure the IEP would organize that info.  But everything else you're describing is just basic good teaching/communicating between staff/parents.  

If your DD should be held back, I would STRONGLY encourage it.  My district doesn't hold kids back and it's a DISASTER.  Now we have kids who struggle in reading/math/both and there are so many pullouts for extra tutoring they are missing current level instruction.  Rinse and repeat over several years and the poor kids are screwed.  I work with kids 1-2 years behind in math and their self-esteem is in the toilet because they can't follow what the teacher is teaching.  If you don't know 3x5, it's kind of hard learn 30x400 KWIM.  Your DD may be sensitive to the fact she's larger than everyone, but that is MUCH better than her believing she's stupid.  

But still, a language class with 10 students, instead of 30, allows for a lot more immersion.

I disagree with your line of thinking.  It isn't about class size, it's about the teacher being able to successfully teach each kid at the level they are at.  10 kids learning a language means you have first year kids with third year kids.  It is incredibly difficult to customize levels with so few kids unless they are plopping the kids in front of some software and headphones (which is what my district is heading towards because they don't want to hold kids back for social reasons).  I attended a small public high school and they only offered Spanish 1&2.  Since I entered at Spanish 3, I spent two years with a textbook in the hall to get my required foreign language to graduate.  It was a joke.  

Again, maybe there's something I'm missing but I haven't heard anything amazing about this school.  It's small (but that can be good or bad) and it gives IEPs (which IMO is meaningless).  Personally, I hated my small high school because the same handful of kids dictated all social norms.  At a larger school, you can find your own tribe and get validation you're normal even if you hate the typical popular things like sports/drama.  

Honestly, I think you need to find a school with smart staff who work with parents.  I have been incredibly pleased with my boys' schools because I can email teachers whenever I want and partner with them on what's going on.  The trick is finding smart staff.  Every school (even private schools) have duds.  At least at a larger school you can find out who the duds are and avoid them.

[shanendoah]

Formerly SK - There's a disconnect. The IEP at this school is NOT like an IEP at a public school. We have one of those with Pop Tart. It's pretty useless.
This is an actual complete education plan for your child. Every child in the school has one. It is basically a plan that puts the teacher, student, and parents on the same page for the goals for the school year. The student actually gets a say, and can help direct their education toward things that really interest them. There's not a need, or even a want, for one size fits all education plans.

The language classes are still broken up by level. There were 2 kids in the Japanese class not because they were the only 2 students taking Japanese, but because they were the two at that level. The 4 kids in the Spanish class were also all at the same level.

I am not saying this school is perfect. We did not walk away going OMG this is the best ever. But we did walk away believing this school could be the best fit for our daughters right now.

If Cupcake needs to be held back, she'll be held back. One of the benefits of this school over public school is that with public school, I have to make the decision at the end of first grade. With this school, we can make the decision at the end of the summer, after we've had more time to work with her, and perhaps after we've gotten her in a tutoring program of some sort. She's smart. She's learning the stuff her class is learning (like her spelling words), she just lacks the same foundation a lot of them have, so while I can ask her to spell "could" and she can, she has a hard time recognizing it on paper, or reading the words in a sentence around it.

Pop Tart also has some of the same foundational issues. She still struggles a bit with addition and subtraction but flies through multiplication and division because of the different points her life was at when she was learning those things. She said to me just last night that she really needs to get better at subtraction. Her reading since she came to us is also greatly improved (and she actually likes to read some things now).

Again, the plan is to try this school next year. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out, but we have a strong feeling it will. And if Pop Tart goes through middle school there and then really wants to go to a public high school, we'll figure out a way to make that work.

[Deleted]

hmm. The ability to cold spell, but not read, is an odd combination not typical in my experience. Has she been tested? If you had to list her three top academic areas/skill and her worst three, what would those be?

If you don't mind me asking....

[shanendoah]

oped - "could" is one of her spelling words this week, so we've been working on spelling it. But she's still having a slightly hard time making the connection between spelling the word out loud and then seeing it on paper (and could is a hard one because she still tries to sound everything out). She does write her own flash cards, some words just don't sound enough like they look and it's creating a disconnect.

Her top three academic skills? 1) Vocabulary - in that if you talk to her, you would not think she was a first grader, she is very verbal and has a pretty decent vocabulary.
2) Memorization - while I'd like for her to actually learn to read, memorization is the first step in that, and things she works on she learns and remembers.
3) Making connections - she was doing some math the other day and we pointed out that when you subtract 8 from 9, the answer is 1, and when you subtract 6 from 7 the answer is one - so any time two numbers are right next to each other, when you subtract the smaller one from the bigger one, the answer is 1. We then asked her what 39-38 was (and she doesn't usually do math that goes beyond 20 in any shape or form) and she was able to answer 1. (I will admit that I don't know how natural this is for kids. It is something Pop Tart has struggled with but has gotten much better at, and something Mini Wheat very much struggled with, though that was part of the reason I thought he might have ADHD - his ability to pay attention long enough to make connections wasn't there.)

Weaknesses? 1) Understanding learning is work - trying to get her to understand that the other kids in her class don't just magically know how to read but had to learn is something she's just not grasping.
2) Reading - It's a weakness right now, but it's already better than it was when she came to us 7(?) weeks ago. I suspect that with continued work she will get better. I also don't think biofamily read to her, so she doesn't have the same family/snuggle time emotional association to reading that I had and most of the kids of my friends have.
3) Focus - She can make it half way through Hop On Pop flawlessly, but after that, she just loses focus and stops being able to read words she was able to read 2 pages ago. Hop On Pop is a surprisingly long book, and I don't actually think she has any attention deficits. She's just 7 and has energy. If we start half way through Hop On Pop, she does the last half pretty well. We as parents need to better figure out the work/break/work/break schedule that works best for her. (This is something else the private school we're looking at does - they have a general tough subject/fun subject/tough subject itinerary, but they will also break things down to 20 minutes work, 5 minutes break, 20 minutes work, 5 minutes break, for kids who need it.)

The other problem with focus is that she's learning a bit too much from Pop Tart who hates taking a break in the middle of work. She wants to get it all done so that she doesn't have to stop having fun later to come back to it. (This is something we have struggled with with her for 2 years and we'll still trying to get it right.) Cupcake is picking up on Pop Tart's "work ethic" and wanting to get everything done at once, which isn't actually the best work style for her (or Pop Tart).

[Deleted]

Ok. A good trick, if you have the time, is to take her spelling words and one way to review them, put them in a list like this: 1) cuold coold could cloud .... for each word and then have her pick out the correct spelling. 

Recall is a necessary skill. Can she comprehend what she is capable of decoding? If she listens to a story can she answer questions or retell?   Decoding is ultimately a very small part of reading.

That math connection is good. It much better to teach math as systems and interactions like that than memorizing facts.

Closed captions are a good thing. Along that note, Disney makes Sing along DVDs, if she likes those songs... she can dance and play, ie. be active, while 'reading' or at least being familiar with the text going with the verbal words being sung.

And I'm always a fan of audiobooks

Focus is not a long term activity for 7 year olds... I really should not be.

Also, how to put this, I don't think learning to read has to be work, but it does take being surrounded by print and text opportunities. If you make it work, she will never love it. Personally I'd rather they come to it late (and 7 isn't really late)... than not love it.  (I never taught my kids to read, they read at 6 and 8... but we did have lots and lots of print around and read together and listened to stories, etc. a lot).  If it was me, personally, I'd look at working on making books more enjoyable than worrying too much about her decoding at the moment, but that's me

Anyway, just some ideas! Not that I don't think you all are doing great ... I just love this stuff.

[Formerly SK]

She's in 1st grade?  She shouldn't be doing multiplication/division at all IMO.  There is so much to math in addition/subtraction.  I wonder if her strong memorization skills are masking her "true" math comprehension.  I tutor a 4th grader who has strong memorization skills and I thought I had him solid on various strategies to calculate his X facts (we actively discourage blanket memorization of facts).  He knew all his math facts - even how to multiply by 9s which is relatively complicated, but then we switched to something else and I realized he had no idea what place value was.  No idea of regrouping or anything.  That's why I suggested to you repeating the grade.  Those various gaps from lack of exposure can be hard to find and yet can cripple a kid.  If they have great memorization skills that makes it even more difficult to help them because they can mask their incomprehension.

Obviously you know your child best and I know nothing about her strengths/weaknesses.  I would look at the curriculum and end of grade standards for this year and next year and see if she can meet them.  I'm assuming the school somewhat matches CC levels, so that should all be laid out for you.  FWIW, I'd be very wary of a school that doesn't teach to CC levels just because if you find out in 1-2 years that this school is not a fit, your DD will truly struggle if she moves into a CC school if she is not at grade level.  Much better to be held back in 1st grade than 5th grade. 

(((HUGS)))  Schooling is so difficult to navigate nowadays.  

I'm also in WA.  Have you looked at the K-12 homeschool option?  I wonder if your district has a semi-school/semi-homeschool program your DH could do with DD?  That might target your DD's issues more specifically and it's free (at least in my district).

[shanendoah]

oped - her school homework comes with a section of mixed up letters for each spelling word and she has to figure out which one it is. Reading is one on one time with an adult/cuddle time. (We also have family story time right before bed.) For example, I was reading to her last night, a picture book but one with a lot of text, she was scanning the page as I was reading and would say words she recognized out loud. What I did was moved my finger along the text as I was reading and when I got to words I knew she knew, I'd pause with my finger pointing to the word and she would read it. She then WANTED to read to me, and wanted to read Hop on Pop. We actually got almost entirely through it before her focus was gone, so she did really great.
When I was a kid, I checked out books with tapes/records from the library all the time. I would follow along in the book as the tape read it to me (with little dings to tell me to turn the page). We need to check into getting some of these for her.
We're about to take our Disneyland trip, so we need to make sure we have her Leapfrog tablet working (came with her) and maybe download some educational games onto my tablet.
C and I both believe that learning and reading should be fun, so we're working on ways to do that.

Formerly SK - Cupcake is in first grade and doing subtraction right now. It is Pop Tart, who is in 5th grade, who is doing division. (It gets confusing, I know.)
The school we're applying to does follow CC. We specifically asked about that because we are both supportive of CC.

C has considered the homeschool option. It would be a VERY BAD plan with Pop Tart. She is quite compartmentalized, and while she has gotten much better about doing work over the summer so that fall isn't quite a shock, she still has very definite ideas about what a parent's role is compared to a teacher's role. Again, it's no where near as bad as it used to be, but she still has trouble accepting "teaching" from one of us. So trying to turn C into her teacher would be a recipe for disaster.
With Cupcake, I don't have as strong a sense that it would go badly, but C also appreciates the separation a bit. There's a whole frustration level that you sometimes get to, and it is kind of nice to be able to turn some of that over to someone else (who perhaps has more training in teaching methods).
I do know someone who ended up going the home/computer schooling route for one of her daughters. Her oldest stayed in regular school and her younger transitioned on to the online, teacher supported, learning program. It made a HUGE difference for the younger child, so we are aware of those options.