Choosing a school as a parent in Mexico? We know how it feels

There are myriad choices you can never fully prepare for as a parent. Some are sticky, some are slippery and many are a combination of both. Perhaps the most emotionally distressing of them all, though? Figuring out where and when to send your child to school in Mexico for the first time.

Relocating to Veracruz for family and flexibility

My son, who is now 3, was 1 year old when we decided to relocate to Veracruz from California. We knew we would be able to better maximize our presence with him in Mexico than in the San Francisco Bay Area — where most of our waking hours would be spent commuting to work, hustling around the clock and paying exorbitantly for childcare.

When we arrived in Mexico, we chose to prioritize our family unit over our professional careers by spending more time together, exploring the country as a group of road-tripping buddies and having daily access to a larger ecosystem of relatives in Veracruz (including my mom, cousins, aunts, uncles and grandfather, who are all native to the area and live within a few miles or less from our home).

For nearly two years, we’ve been enjoying the flexible work-from-home allowances that we’ve been fortunate to experience. We’ve made the most of our time with our son in that span.

Facing the biggest parenting decision yet

But this fall, we’ve inevitably had to make the biggest decision in our parenting journey thus far: Where will our son attend school and spend the majority of his days, outside of the environment that we’ve so carefully and intentionally invested in? In our case, as the parents of a bilingual toddler, it was a weighty decision that my wife and I had to deeply consider. At what point, after all, did it make sense to send our son away in hopes of further developing his Spanish fluency and social adaptability? And what nonnegotiable benefits did we expect that school to provide that we couldn’t?

Raising bilingual children: Why I only speak to my Mexican daughter in English

Choosing a school isn’t exactly an easy formula, and even the most adept parents are often underinformed about it all.

It’s a complex, time-consuming process. And with the start of the school year, my family just went through it for the first time while living in Mexico. Here’s what it looked like for us.

Surveying the options through friends, family and online research

The largest advantage of being in Veracruz is the sheer amount of extended family we have here. We live in the city where both of my parents were raised, and in which many of their immediate relatives — whom I grew up visiting throughout my life — remain. My dad, who now lives in California but regularly visits, likes to point out the schools he once attended all over the city; my mom has done the same. It’s fun to imagine what those eras must have been like for them as students navigating other dynamics. It helps me imagine my son doing the same, in his own way.

Having that deep connection here was a primary factor in our choice to relocate to this specific region of the Gulf Coast. Here, I can speak with my older cousins who have sent many of my nieces and nephews to schools in the area; it gives me valuable perspective on what others seem to have figured out or recommend.

Leaning on community when family isn’t nearby

If that extended family network isn’t available for you where you live in Mexico, look to your neighbors. In our case, we’ve been lucky to have neighbors with children of different ages living on our street. It has been hugely beneficial. We’ve been able to connect and develop friendships with other parents in our community by attending kids’ parties or simply chatting in passing.

We ask questions about where their children currently attend, or formerly attended, schools in the city, and what those experiences have been like for them. For more than a few families, it seems, sending the child to school where one of the parents worked was a key factor. Having an adult at the child’s school and being able to minimize the scramble of pickup and drop-off, or any back-and-forth, was the most convenient choice and trumped any other needs or desires. In our case, that wasn’t applicable.

Public vs. private schooling in Mexico

We learned that families had to choose an educational route in Mexico: public or private? In talking to family members and friends, we quickly realized that anyone who could afford to send their child to private school almost always preferred it as the most viable option. In many cases, private schools seemed to provide a sense of security and status for families, with a majority of private schools focusing on English as a second language. That part wasn’t necessarily important for us. We simply wanted a nourishing, enriching environment with multimodal learning and students from various backgrounds.

In the United States, going to private school signals a certain class, income and family background. Outside of scholarships, my wife and I never dreamed of such access to private education in California. Nor did we need to — the baseline level for free schooling in California is world-class, offering educational diversity in every form.

Measuring the realities of private education

In Mexico, though, that’s not exactly the case. And, contrary to what one might assume, Mexican private schools don’t necessarily translate to outstanding academic outperformance. In a Mexico Decoded essay titled “The Strange Mediocrity of Mexico’s Private Schools,” data revealed that Mexico’s private school students underperformed their global counterparts and even slightly lagged behind their national public school peers. With roughly 12% of Mexico’s total student body opting for private school, enrollment has actually been declining in the country, with an ongoing trend of fewer students entering private schools over the past five years, as reported by Miguel Ángel Dávila. That’s not exactly encouraging information. But, of course, as a former public school teacher in the United States myself, I know that standardized tests don’t tell the whole story about a child’s social, intellectual and creative progress or potential.

What’s the best fit?

To clarify our school selection process, we began to visit a few budget-friendly options within walking distance in our neighborhood. But those environments felt out of sync with what we wanted. From what we saw, the lower-cost programs for preschool toddlers were overfilled, understaffed or enclosed in tighter spaces without any access to outdoor play. It didn’t feel comprehensively nurturing in the way we would hope for our son. And public schools could only offer around three hours of instruction per day, whereas private schools offered upwards of five. The longer hours appealed to us as working parents, so that made our decision even easier.

After being in contact with a handful of other private schools, the three of us visited the most appealing option in our area. Going in person confirmed what we had hoped: After many weeks of searching, we had landed on a school that best fit our circumstances, budget and philosophy of parenting, months before the school year began.

What kind of education matters to you?

Growing up in California taught my wife and me a lot about other cultures, other ways of seeing the world and other social classes. It’s the beauty of being Californian, in my opinion.

In contrast, we knew that in the mountains of Veracruz, we could never replicate that level of elasticity and exposure for our son. Instead, we set out to find the closest version of that global mixture within our new context — a school that offered some level of international presence, but maintained its core Mexican spirit. We also didn’t necessarily want to send our son to a private school with children whose families had exorbitant wealth or were disconnected from the humble lifestyle that we had grown up knowing as the children of immigrants ourselves.

It’s a delicate balance to strike, and one that I personally find difficult to find in Mexico — that is, a middle class, a middle ground, where the gap between everyone in the room is neither too small nor too gaping.

Finding common ground in Montessori philosophy

Through my wife’s research and background as an educator, she had grown interested in Montessori: the belief that a child-centered framework focused on independence, hands-on education and collaborative activity is the key to holistic developmental growth. In our minds, sending our son to a Montessori private school already communicated that the families involved on the campus were generally committed to similar principles and were invested, to whatever degree they could be, in maintaining and supporting that community with care and informed decision-making. Knowing that provided a middle ground for us. That felt reassuring.

Prioritizing nature and green space in Xalapa

Why it’s easy to love Xalapa like Ulysses S. Grant

Lastly came the surrounding environment of the school. We currently live in the bustling, chaotic center of Veracruz’s capital city, where concrete and smog abound. Naturally, as we spend all of our days in this neighborhood — which, to be clear, has other benefits, such as an abundance of nationally acclaimed cafes, restaurants and other services within a short walking distance — we prioritized a greener, more natural environment for our son. That may not be possible in every city (access to the outdoors isn’t easy if you’re in the middle of Mexico City or Guadalajara), but in Xalapa, there are cloud forests, rivers and mountains within a quick drive from our front door.

After looking around, we found a couple of schools located in such an area, where students are exposed daily to interaction with nature and tend a bountiful garden as part of their weekly curriculum. From there, we narrowed it down to our top choice after visiting and speaking with the school head. (If such an outdoor community isn’t available for you and your family, perhaps seeking out a school where urban gardening is emphasized would be the next alternative.) Having that final fresh-air component in place was essential for us, based on our location and context.

Reaping the rewards of our decision

In all, we’ve been happy with our choice. It isn’t the most affordable option, but then again, putting a price on your child’s education and sense of wonder is impossible (and the yearly tuition at the school is equivalent to what we would pay for a couple of months of childcare in California).

Our son attends a school where butterflies inadvertently greet him at the entrance — a big change from the rumble of vehicles just outside our front door. He attends a school where Spanish is the dominant language, but other bilingual families from other countries attend, and everyone is able to show up as their own unique selves (no uniforms, for instance).

It doesn’t make it any easier to drop him off when he’s in tears — spoiler alert: It’s the hardest thing we’ve ever done as parents — but we trust, intuitively, that he is in the right place and that we have made the best possible decision based on what’s available. His Spanish is already fluent and only improving by the day the more he interacts with native speakers in various contexts at his school and in the world.

And with that, our move to Mexico has already paid off.

Alan Chazaro is the author of “These Spaceships Weren’t Built For Us” (Tia Chucha Press, 2026), “Notes from the Eastern Span of the Bay Bridge” (Ghost City Press, 2021), “Piñata Theory” (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), and “This Is Not a Frank Ocean Cover Album” (Black Lawrence Press, 2019). He is a graduate of June Jordan’s Poetry for the People program at UC Berkeley and was selected as a Lawrence Ferlinghetti Poetry Fellow at the University of San Francisco. His work can be found in NPR, The Guardian, SLAM, GQ, L.A. Times, and more. He is currently based in Veracruz.