I'm a little late, but will drop my $0.02. We've had our little lady in private since she was 10 months old.
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We put ours in a catholic school that is close to our house for elementary. We aren't catholic, but the Catholics have been teaching school forever and are good at it, and it's close, and cheap.my 6th grader now goes to Second a Baptist and will through high school. The others will eventually follow.
Considering your specific background, St. Rose of Lima would probably be a really good start. For high school, there's also St. Pius. From what I recall, Lima typically has good reviews and is based in classical education. When our daughter's school didn't seem to want to punish a class bully, we seriously considered making the transition.
The Catholic schools tend to be slighter cheaper than Protestant. As mentioned, they also tend to do well in educating kids.
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Private school isn't cheap. We have sacrificed certain things to allow for the financial aspect of private school. But we reassess every year, and so far, I wouldn't have it any other way. If you can swing it, I'd certainly consider it, tour the campuses, figure out what you want from it. We wanted a little Jesus in their education, so we have stuck with Christian schools.
The sacrifice is real. I can tell you from my upbringing and also what we do to keep ours in private school. There's more to it that just the tuition. There are always various fundraisers or activities or teacher gifts or other extra curricular stuff that you may not have to worry about with public school as much. We specifically have a line item in our budget to track it. We only go on a real vacation once every two years, and it will be three years between our ski trips whereas we used to go every year. It really gets tough sometimes when you want a work break but cannot do it.
As for time spent helping with homework, it's a labor of love. There are tears and frustration and balancing act one has to learn when you want to jump in fix it versus letting them struggle and figure things out. It's all worth it though. Some mentioned not teaching to the bottom of the class, and this is very true at our daughter's school. She struggles at times because it is hard, but she works hard and maintains a 95+ average in every class. Some of her classmates have to get outside help just to pass. The school is telling those parents, "tough titties."
Public school is not what it used to be, and it's especially bad in Houston. Public education has become more of a propaganda teaching machine now than a 3 R teaching institution. It's a big reason kids have come into our school from public, and those are the kids that are struggling the most with trying to keep up and learn the material. The education simply is not as good overall K-12.
Obviously, I don't know what B's specific hang up(s) is regarding private school. If it is the religious component, then yes, he's going to have to get comfortable with that. He would also need to get comfortable interacting with other parents that do not believe in the same politics as him, or even close. Even at our specific school, there's truly a spectrum of political beliefs, but the majority at ours lean conservative. I don't know what I could say to him to ease any concerns he has, I was wish I could, but for our family, unless something financially forced us to go to public school, we would never even consider it. We'd beg grandparents for help first just like my parents had to do. It is THAT important to us.
