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I own property on Lake Arenal and have a 12 foot Escape which is a fairly high tech (roller furling, carbon fiber mast, and mylar sail)which I used to sail weekly. Great lake to sail on. Bring it on down.
lots of reasons. 1. The teachers at this particular private school are excellent. My son’s english teacher is from PA. His french teacher is from Paris. 2. The public schools do not stress english enough due to lack of good english teachers. 3. Due to lack of text books in the public schools, much is learned by “rote”. That is copying things off of the blackboard into a notebook. In my opinion, this method is not only boring, it is very conducive to a dull student. 3. The public schools run a double shift in elementary grades meaning that they only go for about 4.5 hours per day. This along with many public holidays, teacher strikes, and “meetings” makes for a weak school year in number of classroom hours. 4. Computer skills are now necessary from kindergarden and up. Public schools are far behind in this area. 5. Extracurricular activities and sports are nonexistant at most public schools. I am sure that the public schools can look forward to a positive future. At this time, they are not competitive with the typical private school. Hopefully Costa Rica will implement some type of fair taxation on property in order to modernize its public school system. A high literacy rate is misleading here. “See Spot run” does not cut it any more. These observations have been made over 16 years immersed in the culture of this great little country.
The school is on the tico schedule which is actually more practical than ours. The end of the school year basically coincides with the end of the calender year. They took my 8th grader in May when he graduated from the 7th grade in the states. He entered mid year here and graduated 8th grade in December. The school day is 8AM till 3PM except for the little ones who get out at noon. They do teach spanish. Tuition is a nonevent and runs about $100 per month. San Ramon is about 45 minutes NW of San Jose. Some of the San Jose private schools seem too americanized to me and have lost the cultural flavor which brought most of us here in the first place.
I have lived in San Ramon for 15 years and am very happy with a private school here called the Colegio Bilingui, or Bilingual School. It runs from pre kindergarden through twelth grade. My gringo son was here for the whole year of his eighth grade and loved it. They stress english, so native speakers are heros. I am married to a tica and we also have a four year old son. He loves school and wants to go even on the weekends. I will be glad to give you more info if you are interested.
