Thanks for sharing your experience, stranger. This is one of the reasons I like Lemmy though I do still hang out on Reddit, more serious discussion, less memes and trolling. Well... unless you count the front page, I guess.
I can see the cliques issue being a big one especially if you were an outsider from a different community, and came in at the middle school level. That sounds brutal, honestly.
My daughter is lucky to be young and already have friends in the school, girls she grew up and went to daycare and earlier grades with. They still hang out on weekends and chat with their kid messenger app all the time, so that's a foot in the door for sure. In the school she goes to now, there is already bullying and violence so I figure it can't really be worse. On the upside I guess it's already made her tough, we put her in Taekwondo after school and she took to it like a fish to water, she's a little scrapper and her kicks are really mean for a 9yo girl. She already wants to integrate her boxing skills into an MMA style and they're like no, you can't spar like that with the other kids as they aren't expecting a right hook!
The religion class issue sounds odd. It implies that those courses like CAD and coding are only available to those who give up the religious component? But those are premium courses that you would think they want their Catholic students to be able to take. Or am I misunderstanding the way it works?
I grew up with some guys and had some other friends who went to Catholic schools and it seems their opinions were similar to yours. Either they loved it and made friends for life, or they hated it and felt excluded from groups. Nothing in between. However even those who hated it said the same thing looking back, they were glad that they went there for the future opportunities it gave them.
The public school won't allow an end of semester transfer out (probably because they lose the funding) so there's plenty of time to confirm this is what I want for her before next school year, and I'm doing a lot of research and talking to a lot of people.