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. Only the third is 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 a legitimate 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. If the numbers don't work once you've seen them, that's an answer, and a sound one. And if a school only works with significant aid, there's a harder version of the same call. You're deciding how far to let your student fall for a place that may not be realistic, and it's 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 next question is the real one. 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 walks each of you through them.

Whatever the answers, there's rarely a reason to skip the public application. It's one form, grades and test scores play no part, and San Francisco has a lot of great public high schools. The two exceptions are Lowell and SOTA, which run their own admissions inside the public system. We cover Lowell's and SOTA's separately. 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 an honest list 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; four 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.