Finding good schools in a land of plenty 

I was at a housewarming party recently with the parents of many of my sons’ current and former classmates. As is typically the case when you get a bunch of parents together, the conversation shifted to the topic of schools — the good, the bad, and the ugly. 

Both of my kids currently attend a private school in Westchester County, N.Y., just outside New York City, a very affluent suburb that is the fifth-wealthiest county in the state and the 47th wealthiest nationally. 

My boys both started at their school at the age of two because we wanted to ensure they had a strong learning foundation even before entering primary school. Our experience has been good, but we still had every intention of sending our kids to public school when the time came. We’d always heard that Westchester was chock-full of great public schools. What we didn’t realize was that our definition of a great school might be different from others and, in reality, the options for us are pretty slim.