Private School in West Austin vs. Public School in Eanes for an average kid with no special needs

[janejanejanejanejane]

Give Abercorn International School a look as well.

[TXmagCA]

I'd go for the area that you feel most comfortable with and feel that your family would blend with soI hope that you visit each neighborhood. I don't know if you are in Austin yet. RRISD, Lake Travis ISD, and Dripping Springs ISD are all very good districts with great academics and band progams, etc. Eanes properties are much more expensive but is close to Austin. Dripping has better commute to Austin than Lake Travis area or RR but I don't know where your employment is. Travel time from Dripping city center to 2nd street district in Austin is about 30 minutes max non peak commute times. 25 minutes to Galleria and Barton Springs Mall for that type shopping. Large HEB and Home Depot in Dripping but only 20 minutes to Barnes and Noble, Academy, etc. At this point, Dripping Springs has a more small town feel than the other areas but it is growing. Many parks, horse ranch park, Charro Park, sports parks all within minutes of the heart of Dripping. Dripping has an excellent band, good debate, good theater program, and a great AP program but its boys' HS sports are not winning teams, except for swimming, yet the school still has spirit.

[Texasfan96]

Keep in mind that property taxes are forever, tuition is not. I agree with you that there is quite a bit of mainstreaming at the expense of the other kids here in the public system. We have had more problems with physical aggression directed toward our youngest, the only one going to public school, than we ever had with our two oldest (private K-12). The aggression consistently came from kids with some sort of acknowledged behavior issue or impulse control (they don't share specific details, but will acknowledge general problems).

[eirenecat]

Originally Posted by hoffdano

My three kids completed K-12 in Lake Travis ISD over a span of 16 years. I do not remember a single instance where they said their education was disrupted, compromised, or otherwise negatively impacted by non-traditional students in their classrooms. My kids had no special needs, were academically oriented but also in sports, were not part of the football/cheerleader crowd, and otherwise performed well in school.

Don't know when your kids attended LTISD, but I am a LTISD graduate and when I went there, it was simply too small to have many special needs or non-traditional learners in the classroom. I cannot think of a single kid in my class of 93 students who had classroom-disrupting levels of autism, ADHD, etc. There was one deaf girl who attended and was mainstreamed--we all got sign language classes, which was neat. Since LTISD is huge now, I suspect that population density is different.

My daughter is presently in public school in RRISD for first grade and there is a child in her classroom who has some kind of special need and emotional disturbance that manifests in him shouting, hitting other children and the teacher, and generally being incredibly belligerent, defiant, and disruptive. He has a personal aide assigned to him all day. She is basically there just to make sure he is contained or bribed with stickers, candy, etc to not totally lose it. He is assigned a variant of the main lesson that the other kids are working on, but much of the time is unable to complete most of it. He is also taken out of the main classroom for other intensives during the day with the special ed teachers.

I volunteer in the classroom every Monday to assist with the reading groups, so I've seen a lot of his behavior. It's a major disruption with just one child like that in the room, and I personally wouldn't want my daughter to be in a classroom with *more* than one situation like this going on at a time. My daughter's teacher has a teacher's aide for this child, a student teacher, and near-constant parent volunteers in the room to just to keep 23 first-graders running smoothly. I honestly don't know how they would function with more than one situation like this going on.

All of this is to say that I understand and appreciate your situation and concern, OP.

[JT-3]

5 year old thread but still very informative. Wonder what OP did.