One of the teachers at the public high school, a Fort Thomas native who attended all private schools here, said Fort Thomas public schools are "private school education at the public school price."

I also attended all private schools until graduate school but I send my children to the public school here. Before deciding to move here, I researched and visited over 20 schools in the Greater Cincinnati area including the most expensive private schools and best public schools on the Ohio side.

My criteria:

* Small classes and schools but not so small that there was only one classroom and one teacher to choose from in one grade level.
* Sense of community (wanted all parents to be watching out for my children, and me for theirs).
* High parent involvement
* High academic expectations
* Gifted and talented program starting early (ideally in primary grades, in intermediate at the latest).
*Foreign language program in elementary
*Ability and willingess of the school to address any potential future learning disabilities/ issues with performance.
*where the high school graduates attend college


I toured the parochial schools and all three public elementary schools because each school in a district can have a completely different feel. One parochial school was too small and had music, Spanish and art in the same classroom. I thought to do each of those subjects justice, you would need at least 2 of them to have dedicated space.

I also felt that should my children have bullying issues or teacher "fit" issues, there was not necessarily always another teacher and classroom to choose from at each grade level.

The other parochial school was larger and considerably more expensive but if I was going to spend that much money I felt it should have the best Terra Nova scores in NKY/Greater Cincinnati and it did not.

Parochial schools' tuition in NKY are, in general, more than on the Cincinnat side. For the largest Catholic grade school in Cincinnati, St. James, my friends paid $1800/year. All of my friends in NKY spend more than that on their parochial school tuition (many times it is $4000 or more per year per child).

Finally, at that time the parochial schools did not have a gifted program until 7th and 8th grade and did not offer foreign language. I also was wary of my kindergartner being in the same building with 7th and 8th graders and the way 13 and 14 year olds use slang, address their parents and discuss more "teen-oriented" TV programming. This is also the same reason I was avoiding any schools that provided bus service.

To sum it up, my husband and I wanted to be "wowed" by the advantages of the private school, like we wowed when we went back to our own private grade schools. We could see that one of the Fort Thomas schools had a kiln for art. That was not enough to justify the $3-4,000 a year per child tuition cost.

Finally, we started comparing where the graduates of the private high schools and public high schools went to college. At both types of schools many went to NKU. Many from NCC went to Louisville. However, there seemed to be more geographic diveristy at Highlands. Many Highlands graduates go to Harvard, MIT, OSU, UC, Miami, Boston College, etc. If there graduates could compete against graduates from schools outside the Greater Cincinnati/NKY area, we felt our children would do well there.