I agree with you about school choice - my parents chose to send my brother and I to Catholic school. My husband and I chose public school for our daughter and chose the district.
My point is that there is a certain contingent here that disagree with the choice I and many others have made and thus make us out to be nothing short of the devil himself. I have been called everything from an unfit mother to an abusive parent by some of them. They only agree with school choice if the choice agrees with their choice - which is the epitome of a liberal mentality.
The thing is, you took the time to examine your choices and made the ones that best suited you. That is, you didn’t blindly send your kids into government schools without first making sure the sanity level in the school district was acceptable.
I happen to live in a very conservative area where the parents are not afraid to hold teachers accountable. My kids all went to government schools, but they were government schools in a district that was very highly rated. I remained vigilant and debriefed my kids on a regular basis to see what kind of liberal nonsense they were being fed. To my surprise, the teachers were mostly conservatives themselves.
One funny story: One day the kids were at an “assembly” in the main auditorium and were shown a documentary about the Olympics. This was around 1999-2000. During the documentary there was a clip of President Clinton saying something, and as soon as his face was on the screen all the kids cracked up in laughter. My son said the horrified looks on the faces of a couple of the female teachers was priceless.
During our final parent-teacher night for our youngest - - this was in 2008 - - I noticed posters taped up around the hallways announcing an upcoming student “debate”. The topic was: “Who is more qualified to be President, Barack Obama or Sarah Palin.” I howled! Palin was, of course, the VICE Presidential nominee while Ubama was the rats’ Presidential nominee. I am pretty sure the kids (and their teacher-mentors) failed to see the irony.
In any event, I was always ready to find private schools and/or homeschool my kids if the government schools they attended got too silly. My neighbors and my brother (different district) opted to homeschool, and a close friend (again, a different district) opted for Catholic school, so I had plenty of resources available to get information about options.
Unfortunately, the district I live in is the exception rather than the rule. From what I can tell, the closer a district is to a concentrated Democrat parasite nest (”city”) the more likely it is to irreversibly damage children who attend its schools.