By CONSTANCE HUMBURG, Times Staff Writer
Published August 29, 2004 Situation: Times computer-assisted reporting specialist Constance Humburg gave up a sure public school path for her son to attend a Catholic high school.
(This article originally appeared Sept. 14, 2003)
When my son was finishing his last of nine years at St. Paul's Catholic School in St. Petersburg, we had to decide where he would go to high school.
"Choice" was a year away in the public school system, and neighborhoods were still zoned for schools. Oddly, that made the decision hard for us. Had we entered the public school system at that point, our son and his younger sister would have had seats reserved for them at a good public high school. If we waited, we would never again have a sure thing.
We were zoned for St. Petersburg High School, and we did like the IB program and the Advanced Placement courses the school offered. It was close by and part of the reason we bought our house near Crescent Lake. He also had classmates who would be going there.
Then we heard there would be 900 kids in the freshman class, and 200 would be repeating ninth grade. That seemed a bit overwhelming to the parent of a kid who had been in a school of 300 students K-8.
Years ago, we had sent our son to kindergarten at St. Paul's because it was a small, Catholic neighborhood school, and our friends recommended it. We felt Chris would be in a good place to learn because the strict rules would ensure that his classroom would not be chaotic. We also knew we wouldn't have to make another school choice until high school. By eighth grade we were looking forward to the end of tuition payments and were hoping to start saving more for college.
But the more we thought about Chris and where he would do best and considered his preference for St. Pete Catholic, we decided we should bite the bullet financially and send him there. We wanted him to have varied academic and extracurricular opportunities, to feel comfortable and not get lost in the crowd. It was the environment where we felt Chris would fit best while preparing him for college. Our daughter will be in eighth grade next year and we'll again make a decision about high school based on what is best for her particular strengths, temperament and learning style. And because of the choice we made for our older son, she won't have the benefit of an automatic slot at St. Pete High.
Situation: Times computer-assisted reporting specialist Constance Humburg gave up a sure public school path for her son to attend a Catholic high school.