Any Private School Parents Seeing HUGE Drops in Enrollment This School Year?

[jen0610]

I'm not sure about our local private schools - my DD goes to a high achieving Charter School and we are full but at $400 annually, our fee's are extremely low.

My DS attends our local university and they didn't even open 2 full dorms that were open last year. Also he lives in off campus student housing that last year at this time had a waiting list and this year they have 50 vacancies.

We have IPFW (Indiana/Purdue University Ft Wayne) here and they are building more of the on campus housing. They aren't dorms, but apartments that the students can lease. They have 4-5 building in various stages of constrution, mostly close to completed and they have cleared out enough land that it looks like they could build another 7-9 buildings.

We have family that have kids enrolled in the catholic elem schools here. The largest school, there is no decline in enrollment. A couple of the smaller schools are hanging on by their thumb nails. There was no decline at either of the catholic high schools.

 

[eeyore65]

I am really surprised to hear of the private schools that are still busy. All of the private schools here in South Florida are really hurting. Lots of faculty lay offs and enrollments down 25 - 50%. It's a very sad time for private schools here.

Really? I'm in SoFL too and my DS's school is full with a waiting list despite the outrageous tuition.

I thought there would be more dropouts - but they had less then anticipated and ended up over enrolled for some grades.

 

[barkley]

op here-

on the subject of tuition payment policies: the private we use has 3 types of payment plans -one payment (due in august w/biggest discount), two payments (due august and december w/smaller discount) or 10 month plan (no discount).

if you pay on the 10 month you are actualy paying a month ahead for the following month (so august for sept though school starts a bit before the end of august, and in the end may for june). if you don't make your payment by the 10th of the month you are put on notice that your child's enrollment ceases at the end of that month. so no pay by september 10th means no attending past september 30th.

they did this type of plan because since they only go through 8th grade it's not a huge disadvantage to threaten to hold academic records on a kid thats going to public schools. even the other private schools will allow new enrollments if they can just see the report cards, and the kids can pass their entry tests. though-it's becoming common knowledge throughout the private schools in the area that if a parent has made an application for attendance and there's more than a couple of weeks delay in their providing the academic records that the recieving school needs to call the previously attended and just ask "is there a financial reason the parent cannot get copies of the academic records"? if the school called replies "yes" then most other schools will tell the parents they have to get a letter from the other school saying all financial matters have been cleared before enrollment can happen (too many schools have been burned by the same parents so they are trying to help police the situation among themselves).

btw-my son's school has always only had 2 classess with a staff of 2 (1 teacher, 1 teacher/principal). the "lower" grade class (1st-4th) has a WHOPPING 3 students this year, the "upper" grade (5th-8th) has 11. the only thing we figure keeps it open is the fact that the associated boarding high school has faculty for whom their kid's attendance at our school is a big draw for teaching there (boarding school has a realy odd schedual with extended monthly homeleaves and occasional classes on sundays-our school purposely mirrors their's and it would be impossible to teach there if your kid had to attend a school that did'nt mirror).