Fair observations and criticisms. My personal experiences have been good, and (it's hearsay but I do speak to a lot of people about this) most of the people I know who send their kids to the local schools are as happy (or unhappy) with them as the people I know who chose private or charter or G&T schools. That's why I was surprised about the comments here. To me our schools seem no worse than other schools in other areas.
It's not the diversity that's a plus, many schools in other areas are probably more diverse when you look at the demographics. It's nice to have what we have but that's really a minor thing. To me, it mostly comes down to the administration and the teachers. Some of the teachers we've had for our kids have been fantastic. Some not so much, but - again - that's also what I've heard from other schools.
It's clear that people have different standards for judging schools. One person's $1.2M house is another person's yurt
69 is incredibly huge and regimented, as you know, so it's tough for kids who may function better in a quieter atmosphere or one with a little more flexibility and personal attention. Some of the other schools have extremely large ESL populations, and there are some English-only parents who believe they get underserved when so much of the school's resources are devoted to ESL (because ESL is expensive and high-resource.) There are other parents who love the diversity of such schools, but I'm giving you the objections I've heard from people who don't like them.
