When the family budget started feeling the recession’s pinch last year, Angela Allyn and her photographer husband, Matt Dinnerstein, pulled their three kids out of Chicago-area private schools and enrolled them in Evanston, Ill., public schools.<\/p>\n
It has been a challenging transition: Maya, 16, now a high school sophomore, “doesn’t like crowds \u201d\u201d and her high school is as big as a small college,” her mother says. Though Maya is learning a lot in the “amazing” science program, she’s also hoping to leave the crowds behind by doubling up on coursework, graduating by the end of junior year “and then going and doing interesting things,” Allyn says. Her younger children face their own challenges, from bullying to sheer boredom.<\/p>\n
The transition also has been an education for Maya’s parents, who say they had “no choice” in the struggling economy but to switch to public schools.<\/p>\n
They’re saving about $20,000 a year in tuition, but like many former private-school families, they’re coming face-to-face with larger class sizes and the public school bureaucracy as they push to get services for their children.<\/p>\n