New Hampshire

I realize this issue and see how it would wrongly give money to profitable elite schools whose parents can afford to pay. Unfortunately there are some small, alternative schools (I have a teen in a tiny Waldorf high school that is barely solvent, and parents make big sacrifices financially to afford it - many of them on income based discounts) that are filling an important niche. My now college student had to bail from a massive public high school and now his younger brother - we tried to work the system within the public sector and were denied any help, or the overstretched programs just didn’t work for my kids who had serious mental health issues. The public schools here are “survival of the fittest” and for smart, but vulnerable kids there is nothing they can do. Class sizes of 30-40 kids, teachers spending the entire time doing crowd control, fierce student body tribalism and bullying, we were committed idealistically to urban life and public school. But moving our kids out literally saved their lives (both had become suicidal). We are not wealthy and it takes a lot to swing the tuition. And we have to drive them 45 minutes each way. Small refuge schools like this do a service and fill a niche where sometimes public schools fail. Our public school has a big budget but could use more, though it seems they just keep piling on 6 figure admin positions and the $$$ doesn’t seems to affect the students. That said our district’s special needs program is great (but we were told our kids’ mental health issues were behavioral- because there problems weren’t in academic capabilities. That’s my story.