Just as Educated: Johnson County public schooling just as good if not better than private schooling and should not be looked down on

The acrid smell of chlorine hit my nose as I opened the doors to my first lifeguard training session. I was wearing a swimsuit that I didn’t think twice about when I picked it out from my closet — a black one-piece with the letters SME embroidered in blue and white on the chest. 

Or at least I didn’t think twice about my swimsuit until one of my private-school coworkers called my school, Shawnee Mission East, the “ghetto.” 

I let out a laugh. She had to be joking. But she wasn’t. She stared puzzled at my stunned reaction, waiting for an answer like she didn’t just ask if my Mission Hills Country Club feeder school was full of hooligans. 

After noticing my lack of response and dumbfounded face she replied, “Well you know, because anyone can go to your school.” 

Right, but the public pool we worked at where literally anyone could walk in wasn’t “ghetto?” Her logic seemed beyond broken.

This stigma of undereducated, unserious Johnson County public schools isn’t just rude and hurtful, it’s downright inaccurate. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to explain that public schools can be just as academically rigorous as private schools, if not more. 

My class size is four times bigger than most private schools and doesn’t come with a $10,000 price tag, but that doesn’t mean it’s ghetto. These comments imply public schools are run-down and unsophisticated – quite the opposite of East’s freshly painted halls and heavy attendance in honors classes.

We do in fact learn how to solve complex derivatives and perform titrations — just like private school students do. We follow parallel curriculums, we just don’t have to pay college-level prices for it. And not that it’s a competition, but we have far more programs and classes, such as the Center for Academic Achievement and the IB curriculum. 

It almost feels like these private schools kids are conditioned from the get-go to think they’re high and mighty for going to cost-as-much-as-a-year-of-morgage-payments schools. 

A year ago at Center High School, I was herding a group of private-school third graders before they went onstage at a dance recital. One of them stuck out a finger and said “I can tell this is a public school” pointing to a dust bunny in the corner. 

A 9-year-old private schooler — who probably never attended a day of public school — was using the phrase “public school” as an insult.

These subtle digs can make public school kids feel stupid. I was on my 20-minute break at the pool when a co-worker asked what the “authentic public school homecoming” was like. As if it was against the law for girls to wear overly sparkly dresses at private schools. 

Another time, while volunteering, a mom said she was open to sending her child to Blue Valley North instead of Sion as a last resort. Maybe if she saw the Blue Valley North was ranked number one in Niche’s 2025 Best Public Schools in the Kansas City Area it wouldn’t be her “last resort.”

Don’t get me wrong, the stereotypical preppy private schools that have uniforms with pleated skirts and matzo ball soup for lunch might seem better than public school. I’ll even go as far as to say that maybe if you attend these schools you’ll get into an Ivy League school or become the next president. 

But going to these preppy schools won’t guarantee you a Harvard acceptance letter. Actually, the only person I have personally known to go to Harvard University went to a “trashy,” “ghetto” Johnson County public high school. 

I’m in my twelfth year of public education I’m not any less educated or less sophisticated than a private school student. In fact, maybe I’m the one more prepared for the real world knowing not to call a school I’ve never walked into, the “ghetto.”