My two daughters have started at two different schools just this year and it's been working well. My oldest is in 4th grade and has dyslexia and ADHD. The AR curriculum at the public school was a terrible fit for her, so we switched her to a small private that has a more balanced curriculum and a reading specialist.
My younger daughter is in 2nd grade and is really thriving in the public school. Because of her success, the fact that she has great teachers and she is continually challenged, plus financial reasons, we kept her there. She is 18 months younger than her sister and they are extremely close.
The two schools are philosophically much different and the teaching styles are also different, but that is exactly what we needed for each child, they just learn differently. Since they had, for a time, gone to the same school they had that shared experience they seem to be able to relate based on that. There has been no noticeable distance between them since the school year started, they haven't grown apart at all. My older daughter likes having her own experience and her own place, and they both talk to each other about their classmates and teachers and activities all the time.
Right at the beginning my younger wanted to change to the private school too because they do have a lot of fun activities and we were playing them up a bit to ease my older daughter's transition. That wore off though.
As the PP mentioned, logistics were difficult with drop off and pickup times that overlapped but luckily we worked it out though I did have to recruit my family to help.
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