> I'd wake up at 5am to make an 8am start time

Oh man! A friend in HS had swim practice before school and woke up at ~4:30 for it 3 days a week. On each of those days, she was just a zombo. I can't even imagine doing that every year. Do you think it was worth it for you?

The other choices, unfortunately, weren't much better. New York calibrates its schools to match up with parent commutes so that kids leave at the same time or earlier, and these parents in my neighborhood often had the same 90+ minute commute. As an example, there was a much closer in school that was 45 minutes away by bus, but they started at 7am, so it would've required an earlier wakeup time.

There was a school within walking distance, but the graduation rates weren't too hot. The nice thing about school choice, in theory, is that it doesn't cause neighborhoods to gentrify or disintegrate due to the quality of the local school. But if you scale it up to a million kids you basically make it so that only people with time and money can really game the system. I wouldn't consider myself particularly blessed, but I definitely was not the worst off person.