For Mr Small - private school.
You’ll feel much better.
It would be even better for him and his family if he can leave the people’s republik of MD. Move to Texas. Or another, more desirable state. Just don’t move to most very large metro areas unless you are way on the fringe of it and are seperately governed. A medium sized town in a generally conservative area is the ticket.
Private schools are using Common Core, too, from what I can tell, if they are in a state that has adopted Common Core.
We lasted two weeks in public school this year. I didn’t expect to homeschool this year, but here we are. We had no other choice because things were really THAT bad this year, and we live in an “excellent” school district.