My oldest daughter, JJ, graduated from high school with great friends, a very good education, and nearly a year’s worth of college credit. The Husband attended that same high school 30 years ago. Yet, I am considering switching school districts for BaoBao.

The Husband thinks the current district is just fine, and I agreed until we attended JJ’s graduation ceremony. JJ was one of 671 graduating students. This was difficult for me to fathom, as there were fewer than 400 students in the entire school system of K-12 that I attended.

It is one thing to KNOW that your child is Student #377, and another to SEE your child being #377 at graduation.

Then there is the school culture. We live in one of the most racially diverse congressional districts in the U.S., and that is reflected in the student population. JJ is of Chinese descent, and I wanted her to be among a diverse student body.

That there is conflict among the student groups is not surprising, but what worries me is that the school district does not address that conflict. And that conflict is now prevalent in BaoBao’s elementary school, where Caucasians are the minority.

In JJ’s senior year, several students were suspended due to a fight that was racially motivated, and a classmate was arrested for sex trafficking. Yes, a high school student was pimping out developmentally disabled classmates.

Minnesota offers open enrollment, which means we can leave our school district and apply to a different district, which may or may not choose to accept BaoBao. State funding follows the student, and schools use open enrollment rosters to keep their classrooms up to quota.

There’s a snag, though. BaoBao attends a Chinese immersion school, and there are few of those around. We have the option of a nearby private prep school with a Chinese program and a $26,000/year price tag, a less-diverse public school district with a Chinese immersion program but a class size just as big as the one we currently attend, and looking for a school without regards to whether it has a Chinese program.

The prep school claims to offer scholarships, but do I really want my kid to be the “scholarship student” among much wealthier classmates?

Will attending a less-diverse public school eliminate the social problems we saw in JJ’s school?

How do you decide it’s time to switch school districts?