I've searched archives and can't find details on these schools... anyone have any expereinces with them, Yay or Nay?

St. Martin De Porres in Germatown on Logan
Holy Cross in on E Mount Airy Ave
St. Athanasius on Limekiln Pike (Germantown/WOL?)
FS Edmonds (on Thouron Ave) they seems to have great test scores when compared to other city publics

My son's private school tuition is now higher than my mortgage and I just can't justify that anymore (espcially with a second child not far behind for K)

Sounds like you're paying a ton of tuition or have the deal of the century on your house. Not that they're giving either of them away.

Neither really, our mortgage is moderate, its the debt, (student loans namely...paying for education is a vicious cycle for us) that makes it all so impossible.

That tuition-to-mortgage ratio is a tough one. Our son's daycare tuition, for part-time care, was more than our mortgage payments for a couple years there. Now he's in a preschool, not a daycare, so his tuition is lower.

Don't know about the schools you're considering. Sorry. But good luck with this.

Yeah our daycare bill was nearly double our mortgage for a while. I ended up taking on a second job and one of the benefits was that they paid for childcare.. we only paid a small copay. Man those were the days... (though I despised that job... good riddens).
Thanks... we looked at 2 schools today, loved one hated the other.

My friend is the counselor there. Let me know if you are still interested and I will see if I can get you in touch with her.

Thanks- we visited them today. I think we may know the same person; I've been in conact with a staff person there as well.

Anyone have any insight into Jenks elementary school in Chestnut Hill?

I am interested in Jenks, as well: http://www.phila.k12.pa.us/schools/jsjenks/ I went to an Open House a few months ago and found the principal, Steve Brandt, to be an energetic young man who is eager to improve the school and attract more involved parents from the community. He talked about their new computer lab, his ambitions to partner with Morris Arboretum and the Woodmere Art Museum, and his general responsiveness to parent concerns. They do offer some early foreign language education (Spanish). My concerns were the class size (typical for a public school, I think), the lack of a librarian (volunteer parents staff it), and the failure to make AYP in IEP reading last year (due to special ed students' not being offered special accommodations on the exam, according to the principal.) I was very impressed with the one faculty member I met. I would be very interested in hearing from other parents who are at Jenks about their experience.

When judging schools that do not make AYP due to special needs children, keep in mind the Catch 22 situation the schools are in. A child cannot get an IEP, say in reading, if they are not reading two grade levels below their actual grade. Then, they have to take the PSSA on their actual grade level! So you have a child reading on a third grade level taking the fifth grade exam. And the "accommodations" for reading aren't much. They are allowed to take the tests in a smaller room with fewer kids. They can take as much time as they need, but so can everyone else. They can take smaller chunks of the test at a time. That's it for reading. Not likely to make much difference if the material is just beyond you. Also keep in mind that a school must have a certain number of special needs kids to even have an IEP category for AYP. This penalizes larger schools. A small school's IEP kids may do just as poorly on the PSSA but since there are not enough of them (I believe 40 is the magic number), the fact that the special needs kids do not do well on the test is not known.

Of course, the real issue here is what those tests do to the kids self-worth but that's another thread!

When judging a school, please look at how the regular education students did. Pay attention to the racial and economic groups as well. But don't put much stock in the special needs tests scores. They just don't reflect the job the school is doing with those kids.

And, by the way, I've known a number of kids who went to Jenks and did very well.