We believe in public school. It just didn’t work for our neurodivergent daughter.

I’ve always enjoyed the excitement surrounding back-to-school. As a kid, I’d plan my outfit a week in advance and daydream about who I’d sit next to in class or if my best friend and I would have the same teacher.

As a mom, it was great to watch my kids experience the same nervous anticipation I felt at the start of a new school year. We looked forward to that first day when they’d zip up their new backpacks and join the kids walking to school loaded down with bags full of supplies.

That excitement didn’t last, though. Eventually, back-to-school became synonymous with fear and dread. As my daughter advanced in grades, going to school became a painful process full of failure and embarrassment that slowly degraded her spirit.

When it was time to transition from learning to read to reading to learn, my daughter couldn’t make the leap. In third grade, we learned she had dyslexia, ADHD, and an auditory processing disorder. We put our faith in her school to intervene with an Individualized Education Program (IEP).

By the time she started fourth grade, that first-day-of-school excitement had lost its magic for us. She dreaded having to sit still all day and try to keep up with a class of 24 other fourth graders. And I dreaded seeing the…