Public, private, or both?

Public, private, or both. It sounds like one question, and it's really three, in order. The first is about your family's values and money. The second is about your student. The third is mainly about logistics.

Start with values and money, because for some families those settle it. A commitment to public education, a faith community your family belongs to, a conviction about what money is for. Those are yours to weigh, and if they decide the question outright, that's your answer.

Affordability deserves real numbers before it gets a veto, though. Most private schools offer need-based aid, plenty of families pay well below sticker, and applying for aid is more ordinary than it feels. However, if a school only works with significant aid, there's a harder version of this decision. You're deciding how attached to let your student get to a place that may not be realistic. It's likely kinder to weigh that before the touring starts than after an offer arrives without the aid to take it.

If values and money leave both doors open, the second question takes over. What's right for this student? A school type can't answer that by itself, so ask specifically. Does your student do better in a small room where everyone knows them, or a big one with more to choose from? What did their middle school's environment give them, and what did it cost them? Do they need structure handed to them or room to run? Is there a faith, an art, or a subject worth building the next four years around? Those questions are what deciding what you want from high school is for, and the Family Compass is built to hold your answers.

Whatever the answers, there's rarely a reason to skip the public application. San Francisco has a lot of great public high schools, and applying is one form where grades and test scores play no part. The two exceptions are Lowell and Ruth Asawa SOTA, which run their own admissions inside the public system. Each has its own guide: Lowell and Ruth Asawa SOTA. Unless you're certain you wouldn't take a public seat, rank your honest choices. A student only ever holds one offer, and a declined seat goes back into the waitlist rounds, so ranking what you'd take costs no other family theirs. And one of those schools may turn out to be the right home for your student.

The private track is where logistics deserve a hard look. Each private school is its own application, with its own January deadline, its own test where one is required, its own interviews and aid paperwork. The work compounds per school, in a season that's already heavy, which is why the list stays short; three to five is about right. The reward for carrying both tracks is that public and private decisions all arrive in March, within days of each other. So a family running both never has to pick between public and private in the abstract. You apply to both, wait for March, and choose between the actual schools that said yes.