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2012 Spring, New England, USA

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chin:
The front of the Taft School. Mr Taft was the brother of former US president William Taft.

In the summer, the tree in front must be very imposing.

chin:
The pictures from school visits are all posted. I will later post other pictures from this trip.

While I was traveling Massachusetts, Connecticut & New York in those few days, one of the local news was this public school was in such bad shape that the authority was planning to shut down one of the main buildings, and the parents were very concerned, etc... On the local TV, I can see that the public school building was really lack of maintenance, the toilets was not clean and need fixing, etc... In the news, that school building was to be shutdown for now, until they have the fund to repair and revert back to certain safety standard.

Yet there we were, visiting private schools that takes millions to build and maintain. Not only the buildings are safe and nice, the amenities like sport facilities rival those at many smaller universities, and small classes where one teacher take care of only a dozen or less students. For me coming from Hong Kong, the most impressive was that the teachers are career teachers who stays in one place and teach for many years, instead of school hopping looking for "better career" like many now teaching in international schools in Asia.

The increasing wealth gap is now a hot topic in the US as well as in HK. In our visit we just have another first hand experience of this wealth gap between well funded private schools vs poorly funded public schools featured in the local news. I am just glad that my kids do not have to go to the poorly funded public schools, that we have choices.

hangchoi:
These schools are very nice.......

So.....what is your choice, or your family's choice?

chin:

--- Quote from: hangchoi on 13 February 2012, 22:31:37 ---These schools are very nice.......

So.....what is your choice, or your family's choice?

--- End quote ---

[hide]
It's more like my daughter's choice. I think for now her preference is Taft > Cushing > Choate.

In 2 months or so we will know if she would get accepted into which. Then she would decide to go or to stay in HK.

My wife & I prefer she goes to Taft.

One thing I noticed in all three school visits - that I was the most under-dressed father of a prospective student.
[/hide]

chin:
After the school visits, we stayed in New York City for 2 nights.

I have been to NYC a number of times, but always just for business meetings. This was about the first I came only as a tourist. So we did the proper tourist thing, like going to the Times Square, Central Park, see a Broadway show, etc...

Our hotel is right on top of the Time Square. This picture was taken on the first morning, and I opened my eyes to the New York skylines.

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