The Foreign Service Journal - December 2017

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | DECEMBER 2017 103 FROM THE JUNE 2016 FSJ EDUCATION SUPPLEMENT Applying to Boarding School: Lessons Learned BY JOHN F. KROTZER T he reasons parents choose the boarding school route are as varied as the students themselves: unsuitable schooling at post, special needs support, gifted student opportunities and the need for stability have all been regularly cited. In my conversations with these parents, one thing that most have in common is that boarding school was not part of their child’s long-term education plan. Something happened, and suddenly boarding school was an option they needed to evaluate quickly! Such was the case with us, and I began to quickly learn as much as I could about the process. Despite all of our research, we discovered a number of key things about the boarding school application process too late. I hope a few of these lessons will be helpful to those in the Foreign Service thinking about boarding school in the future. John F. Krotzer, a Foreign Service family member, is posted in Beijing. His complete article can be found at bit.ly/BoardingSchoolApplication.