I don’t like the public school system.
I send my 3 kids to private (Waldorf) school.
It’s way spendy, but they learn stuff other than urban combat survival.
My family does not belong to an kind of ‘Protected Class.’
Nor are any of my kids ‘special’ enough to receive vouchers in my home state.
Our home life is stable enough to disqualify the kids as ‘at risk.’
We are basically a bunch of edumacated lower middle-class White Folks who want to distance ourselves from the underfunded, neglected, saturated fat lunch-serving, soul-crushing, Church vs State battleground, Capitalist-Machine cog-factory that the public school system has become.
We can barely afford the cost of the school, but we have chosen to sacrifice the expenses of car payments, big house mortgage and pretty much all of the gizmos most folks take for granted in favor of strengthening the non-denominational souls of our brood.
Oh yeah, and we also resent the HUGE chunk of our property tax payment that goes to the above-referenced institutional learning facilities in our 'hood.
So, the 2 part GQ: Is there any way I can opt out of paying for an educational system I neither support nor use? What grant sources (aside from the financial aid we already receive) are available to assist with funding a private pre-college education?
Good questions, Cheauvan. The answer to your first question is not good news: you get to help pay for everyone’s education. Perhaps others here know a way to opt out of paying property taxes, but I sure don’t. Are there states that allow you to decline payment of taxes that support educational institutions? Dunno. As for your second question, I think there are some funds available (the Pell Grant comes to mind) for students who are “pre-college.” I wonder if a search on Google might turn up some useful information. Another idea is home schooling. There are home schooling networks that can give you lots of suggestions about funding, school supplies, and “partial attendance” at nearby schools.
Just wanted to pop my head in and say I admire your commitment to your kids’ education. I’m sure you’ll see your investment returned many times over in the lives of your children.
You need to write to your Senator. Seriously. I wrote mine asking him what kind of help I could get paying off my student loans when I graduate from college. He sent me a big packet of information – some of which I already knew, but he pointed me towards programs I didn’t know existed. If there is a help available for people like you in your state, your Senator will know about it. It’s their job to know about stuff like that 
just wondering. Do your kids like Public or Private school better? I have quite a few friends that detested private school(catholic).
Really? The oldest did a couple years in public preschool. She never said she hated it. She’s 7 now and remembers (not all that fondly) that it was much different from how things are done at her school now.
My folks took me from PS in 7th grade and put me into a Catholic school for discipline :rolleyes: --I hated it so bad I did everything I vcould to get myself expelled, but I got the message whther they inended me to or not. Got with the PS program and stayed outta trouble. There is plenty to not like about Catholic schools from my own experiences and from acquaintances of mine that have survived them.
The way things are going for them right now with their education you’ll see me hanging around the plasma donation station before you see me dropping the kids off at PS. I’d sell the youngest for scientific experiments to get the dough before I change schools(she’d think it was kind of cool).