Part of a group

Tonight, on the way home from a late track meet, Austin (age 14) had an interesting thing to say. He told me that at McQuaid, he feels like he's part of something important. He said he never felt like that at Geneseo Central. And he doesn't feel like that with his other activities either. He's quite active in the Civil Air Patrol, and he's now an NCO with CAP, but he made sure to tell me he doesn't have it with CAP either. Austin very specifically told me, if it wasn't for that feeling of "membership" at McQuaid, "something important", he would decide to be home-schooled too. Austin has been for years telling us that because he is super athletic, he could be one of the jocks, but he's also super academic, so therefore, both the jocks and the athletes rejected him at the public school. Austin never felt one of any group at Geneseo. At McQuaid, it's just Assumed that every student is above average at academics, and the athletic students can play sports without pretending that they're dumb. Austin is now in 9th grade Science and Math (he's in 8th grade), but no one at McQuaid expects anything less.What they really want him to do is break the 5min mile (he's sooo close!). This all came up tonight because I reminded Austin that with our two sons coming from China in March, his tuition is on the line. If Austin isn't performing at the high honor roll level (over 95 GPA) it's easier for us to stop justifying the tuition, for one of now 4 boys.We can't afford to send all 4 boys to McQuaid (10k per year) and so if Austin isn't going to be the top 1% of his class, that is an easy out for us. Yep. It's a mean and gruesome reality. But, so far, Austin has always had a 96% GPA, and he is now ranked as the fasted 8th grader in the history of McQuaid. But still...if Austin wanted to be home-schooled, if, for instance, he wasn't quite so enamored with McQuaid, that would be a great thing for me. I remember the year we skied together, all the time. Austin was almost 5 and could've gone to Kindergarten that year, but I kept him back one more year, since he had a November birthday. We had the most fabulous time together. We skied, and colored, and read a million books!! Yes, I'm ok with McQuaid because it's what makes Austin happy...but NEVER in a million years would I have imagined that I'd say this....I'm also ok with home-schooling.