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Published on 04/21/1999 All articles from this issue

Appeal of private schools

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By Linda Taaffe

Town Crier Staff Writer

Independent curriculum, individual attention draws parents, students

When Annie Lin-Johnson's son was ready to enroll in elementary school, she began weighing his educational options. What followed surprised the Los Altos mother.

Lin-Johnson said she lives in an area with good public schools and believes in the public school system.

"Los Altos has great schools," Lin-Johnson said. "I had very traditional schooling in the Midwest."

But Lin-Johnson said the public school system's conventional six-and-a-half-hour day left her unsettled. As a member of a dual-working family, with a rigorous job at Sun Microsystems, Lin-Johnson said finding after-school care was a concern.

"It's just such a hassle. There's no care on holidays or in-service days," she said about the public school system. "After-school care is very limited in Los Altos."

Lin-Johnson enrolled her son in Emerson School in Palo Alto - a private, year-round school coordinated to coincide with the area's corporate work schedule. Each school day is nine hours, running from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Lin-Johnson said she doesn't have to worry about juggling work and school schedules or shuffling her son across town to an after-school site. And the school's small class sizes provide her son opportunities to work one-on-one with his teacher.

Dan and Kathy Lynch also believe in the public school system. But when they got word about a new all-girls' middle school with an emphasis on technology, math and science, they pitched in $100,000 to help launch the project in 1997 in 1997. The Lynches see the school as a supplement to the area's "excellent (public) schools," they said during a 1997 interview.

"I think it's important to shelter girls' self-esteem during challenging years because they are so impressionable," Kathy said.

The Girls' Middle School opened in Mountain View last fall with 35 girls enrolled in two sixth-grade classes. The school's progressive approach to science has attracted national attention. School officials say more than 50 additional girls have already applied for next year's classes.

Despite being home to the state's highest ranked public school districts, the mid-Peninsula has seen private middle schools flourish over the past year as they fill in niches that public schools can't.

Emerson, Oak Canyon and the Children's International schools, all in Palo Alto, and the Girls' Middle School are just some of the private schools in the area that either opened or expanded this academic year.

Enrollment increasing

According to studies released by the Council For American Private Education, enrollment in private schools is increasing, with middle school populations growing more quickly than elementary populations. Middle school enrollment is projected to increase 12 percent by 2008, according to the study.

About one in four children -or about 6 million students -are enrolled in private schools across the nation, according to the council. Marge Gratiot, superintendent of the Los Altos School District, estimated that between 8-10 percent of district's population is enrolled in private schools, with a higher number attending middle schools.

Janine Herron, co-founder of Oak Canyon School, said she has noticed the peaked interest in private middle schools. Enrollment at Oak Canyon has more than doubled for next year, she said. She expects to have 14 students - eight more than are currently enrolled.

Herron said she believes parents realize the value of having smaller class sizes and individual attention during the middle school years. Herron and her mother-in-law Jeannine Herron, who has 30 years of experience in education, opened Oak Canyon School at the First Congregational Church in Palo Alto last fall after scouring the area for a middle school with small class sizes and high academic standards for her son. Herron said many of the private schools were full or didn't have the low teacher-to-student ratio she wanted.

The school opened with six students in grade 5. Herron said she plans to add a grade each year until the school is a full-service middle school. The school uses California's public school curriculum as a guide, but emphasizes hands-on projects and computer skills. Maintaining a teacher-student ratio of 1-to-10 and keeping classes to a maximum of 14 allows students the opportunity to work extensively on the computer, she said. The school currently has five computers for its six students.

"We really want to introduce kids to as many applications as we can so they can use computers throughout the curriculum," said Jeannine Herron last week as students worked on morphing their faces on the computers with the latest computer software as part of an eight-week history project.

Jeannine Herron said she believes the school's many hands-on projects encourage students to work as a team to brainstorm and implement ideas similar to the way business executives do, preparing them for life outside of school.

The Emerson School

Tucked on one acre behind the Elk's Lodge in Palo Alto, the inside of Emerson School looks much like one of Silicon Valley's high-tech offices. The classrooms are lined with cubicles instead of desks, to provide students their own computer and work space.

Founder Chuck Bernstein said the school's emphasis isn't about computers, however.

"We try to make the computer really unimportant," he said. "We want them to use it only when they need it, like they would a pencil."

Bernstein said the school emphasizes the development of the "whole child," following the Montessori approach to teaching.

"We want to produce self-directed, self-confident and socialized children, capable of problem solving," said director Jay Estey.

Students from three grade levels are grouped in each classroom. Each day is structured around small group projects and self-directed studies, where students work at their own pace. Students keep portfolios of their work, which are assessed, but not graded.

Entering its seventh year, Emerson has 40 students in two classrooms. School officials say they plan to expand the school to grade 7 this fall.

Bernstein, who served for seven years on California's State Commission on Special Education, founded the elementary school in 1993, a year before his son was to enter first grade. Discouraged by the public school system's lack of local control, he expanded his preschool into the elementary school level.

"There's no local schools anymore. Everything is determined in Sacramento," he said. "It's not possible for (public) schools to have the power to make quality changes. They can't change books, increase funding or have innovative programs. They can only do the status quo. That bothered me."

Passionate about education

Kathleen Bennett, who spearheaded the formation of the Girls' Middle School, said she had always been passionate about education. The former middle school teacher said a report released by the American Association of University Women revealed that girls' performance in math and science decline significantly during the middle school years. That prompted her to open the Girls' Middle School in Mountain View last fall.

"Girls don't feel fully empowered because they don't always have a good sense of working with the physical world," Bennett said. "We want to offer non-traditional experiences they can't get a public schools."

She said the local response has been so overwhelming that she has enough funding to provide full scholarships to nearly 26 percent of the students. She plans to add grade 7 next year.

Located at St. Athanasius Roman Catholic Church, students sit at tables and work in small groups. The atmosphere is comfortable and casual with most students wearing jeans or shorts as part of the dress code.

Science is part of the daily curriculum, including an engineering class and an emphasis on hands-on learning. There's even a "Social and Emotinal Learning" class.

Rachel Milstein, who attended Montclaire School in Los Altos last year before transferring to the middle school, worked on electric currents in her engineering class last week. The Los Altos resident said she isn't particularly interested in math. "I want to study dance or acting," she said. "But I guess I'm more interested in engineering now," she added. Milstein said she doesn't have time to miss boys since she plays in co-ed athletic leagues after school.

Milstein said she's used to the school's small size, too - which is two students smaller than one class at Montclaire, she said.

School officials said private schools are not for every student. Some flourish in small, unstructured settings. Others need more structure, Estey said. Finding the right fit seems to be key at the schools. Each one has its own admission process for this purpose.

Los Altos resident Wendy Johnson said the program at Emerson School is ideal for her son, who she described as creative and full of energy. She said the hands-on, self-paced curriculum captures his attention through in a way that standard school programs would not.

Johnson said she thinks highly of Los Altos' public schools and will probably send her son and daughter to them some day.

Johnson admits that there are some things private schools can't provide within their small and sheltered rooms. "There's a whole lot of stuff out in the world," she said. And she want her children exposed to those things so they will be prepared for the world when it bombards them later in life, she said.

Although the state has little control of a private school's curriculum or teacher qualifications, the Council For American Private Education reports that students who attend private schools tend to work at higher levels than their public-school counterparts. Patricia Radovich, a teacher at Emerson School, said most of her students work above their class level.

Tuition in these private schools ranged from $10,085 to $11,000 per academic year. Bernstein said when comparing the cost of additional before- and after-school care at public schools, some private schools actually cost less.