Yesterday I blogged about starting DD1 in 8th grade at the local public school, rather than home school. I was typing a response to the comments in the post, and my response was getting long enough that I decided to make it its own blog entry...

Now that I think about it a bit, we do have experience with the nebulous costs of sending kids to public school.

We had been sending our boys to the special needs school. We tossed the requests for fund raisers, deluxe photo packages, and such in the trash. It seemed to help, because I think staff at the school got the message that we don't participate in such things, because we quit getting them. There is a difference, as the boys' understanding is such that they had no clue what it was that we weren't participating in.

The class that DS1 was in last year took occasional trips to places like McDonald's, and the movie theater. We valued those opportunities, because it's good to get an autistic child out in the real world, so he knows how to interact with people in those situations. The teacher appeared to have a fund to defray part of the cost, because the amount requested would never completely cover what they were doing. Her fund probably came from fund raising efforts! If the requested amount for the trip was $3, we'd throw in $5, or $7, throw in $10, and ask that she keep the change for another student or trip.