What to look for in a private school

[Mkrop]

Kristine -- have you had any more tours this week? I have my first one tomorrow and I have to say I am nervous for some reason.

This is because you are making a decision for a very important person in your life. Also Catholic schools do have a way of doing that to ya I know I am more nervous when I have to speak to the prinicipal bc she is a nun then any of his DS's teachers

GL and just observe everything, you will get the feeling if it is the right place.

 

[connorlevismom]

Kristine -- have you had any more tours this week? I have my first one tomorrow and I have to say I am nervous for some reason.

Let us know how it went!

I had one on Tuesday and one tomorrow.

The one on Tuesday was kind of up and down. I LOVE the principal. He is young and very energetic and has lots of ideas and hopes for the school. He is very involved with the kids and everywhere we walked, the kids were super excited to see him. He goes into the kids rooms and reads to them when he is having a stressful day because he said that being around the kids makes him so happy. The downfall of the school is that there is no playground! It looked to me like it was a blacktop partial parking lot that they play in. That was a deal breaker for us. You have to have some sort of playground. Where I went to elementary school we just had a huge field with no climbers or anything. Just a field. But it was a soft place to run around. I just don't feel comfortable with my kid running around a parking lot.

We have also crossed another school off our list due to their ability to return e-mails or phone calls. I e-mailed 2 times about scheduling a tour and heard nothing. Phoned them and head nothing. Finally today, I get a hold of the person that schedules them and she tells me they don't give private tours. You need to come to a group tour. I am not interested in that in any way shape or form. I want to sit down with the principal afterwards and discuss MY questions with them. I just think if you want me to pay money to go to your school, you could at least give me a private tour. Besides that, if you cannot even get back to me about scheduling a tour, in my mind your not going to be very responsive if an issue comes up at school that needs to be dealt with. That is just my gut feeling and I need to go with it. Does ir seem to harsh?

Krisitne

 

[Mkrop]

Well two thoughts:

I agree if they are not calling back they are out, even to call you and tell you they only do group tours would have been much better than no response at all. Although our prinicpal would prefer the groups tours and trys to schedule several during the year and let people know. I dont think she is opposed to private tours just that she tries to get then all to come at one time. And she is very responisve to questions (she is th email queen ) but I think she is pretty busy to do some of the stuff too so if she can get a bunch of parents in at one time, I think that she feels this is more efficient KWIM She is also the Power Point queen so she likes to show slideshows of the school too and I think she likes to show them to a group.

I never had a playground at any of the schools I went to growing up and we did fine playing everything on blacktop. DS10's school does have a playground but the grades alternate days so all can play on it plus you dont have my huge 4th grader on there with a itty bitty 5 yr old. The other days they play on the blacktop. They play tag, touch football, 4 square and some days they do basketball. The girls play jump rope and hopscotch too. I know some of the boys do imaginary games wehre the running all over doing Star Wars stuff but DS is a sports guy and cant be bothered with imaginary stuff. They seem to be fine and burning off the steam of sitting all morning.

 

[Aliceacc]

Choosing not to return calls or emails is simply bad business. All other things being equal, it's not a good sign. (Then again, his secretary may be on maternity leave, the system may be down... there may be an explanation. I would try once or twice more, then take it as an indication of a problem.)

As to private tours... I guess it depends on the school. My school does them, but we also try to get most of the interested parents in on the group tours. It's simply a matter of numbers. As a high school, we take in 120 new sixth graders, 80 new seventh graders, and 600 new freshmen each year. That would be an awful LOT of private tours!!!! Also, some schools may be hesitant to have strangers in the building while school is in session because of security concerns.

As to the playground: as with all things, go with your gut. But I have no problem with it for 2 reasons. First, the Catholic school I went to didn't have a playground and it didn't scar me. As Mkrop mentioned, we found lots of games and didn't miss the playground at all. In fact, the lack of playground equiptment probably didn't hurt our imaginations any. Secondly, in NY, a good part of the school year the weather makes the playground useless anyway. Once the weather gets really miserable, the kids spend the day inside.

 

[GatorGirl]

Oh you guys I have alot to share (mostly good) but I am going to tour the public school this morning at 9 am so I will wait until after that because I am sure it will just get worse instead of better in terms of me being confused as all get out as to what we should do with DD next year.

Also aliceacc and anybody else I am going to post our local schools test scores and I want you guys to tell me what you think. They just posted results for the Iowa Basic skills tests and I am looking at them and trying to decided what I think. Like I said before the scores are average, not the best (we have schools with almost 100% student pass/exceed ranks around us) but definitely not the worst either. Plus we live in GA which almost always ranks near the bottom in terms of the state rankings of schools.

What I don't like in the public school is the higher you go grade wise the lower the scores get (although not by much just a few % points but still) and their has been a slow decline in scores since 2003 (again a few % points but still a decline every year). Those to me are red flags.

So hopefully this afternoon I can post with an update on what I found so far but I thought to be fair and get a clear picture I need to go and visit the local public school since I have never set foot inside the place!

connorlevismom -- two things for me, I would want a playground too. I know we played on blacktop growing up and after a certain age a playground isn't manadatory but I think for the younger kids it is nice to have. Also if they aren't responding to you then I agree they don't want your business. I would probably just move on since you have several other options to choose from. My thought was when I read about them not responding was well what if you enroll your child in their school? Is it going to take repeated phone calls/emails for you to get a response after he is enrolled too? I am so glad you are sharing your experiences, it is helping me 100% -- TY

 

[hematite153]

We have also crossed another school off our list due to their ability to return e-mails or phone calls. I e-mailed 2 times about scheduling a tour and heard nothing. Phoned them and head nothing. Finally today, I get a hold of the person that schedules them and she tells me they don't give private tours. You need to come to a group tour. I am not interested in that in any way shape or form. I want to sit down with the principal afterwards and discuss MY questions with them. I just think if you want me to pay money to go to your school, you could at least give me a private tour.

I absolutely agree with the issue around contact. If they cannot get back to you with a simple "we only offer group tours" message, then, they are likely to be unreliable in this issue in general.

However, I actually read the "group tours only" as a good thing. My high school offers a SINGLE night when prospective students and their parents can come to visit.

On the "my money" issue, think about it from the other perspective. Say, you choose to send your DS to this (or any) school. Then, for next year's 20 spots there are 150 people inquiring (sound like a lot, but you are looking at 7 schools so this is about the right ratio). Do you really want the school to spend your money on offering individual tours to those 150 people instead of educating your DS? Believe me, tours take up a lot of staff time and they usually mean that something else doesn't get done.

 

[connorlevismom]

I had another tour today. Wow - totally a different experience. The school was fantastic and did so many cool things. For instance, the Kindergarten teachers go to the child home before they start school so that they get to know them. So when your child comes into school for the first day, they have someone to recognize. I thought that was pretty unique. The actual education seems great and the school is really nice. The princial did not have much of a personality but she was very nice. I am just not sure I can see myself living in the area that it is in. So I will really have to think about that. I would not hesitate to send DS to the school though. I just did not get the warm fuzzies I am looking for. So it will for sure go in my maybe pile.

I don't have another until Thursday of next week.

As for the school that I deleted because of the communication and tours. I think someone said give them some time, maybe they were on vacation or something. The problem is that I e-mailed 2 different people. The principal and vice-principal. Neither seemed to interested in getting back to me. I understand about the personal tour thing and it is a bigger school that most of the ones we are looking at. I have to admit that I was not so sure about that school to begin with and had some pretty point blank questions for the principal that I needed to have answered. They are the most expensive school by far but yet they offer NO foreign language for any grade. If you want spanish you have to pay extra and it is an after school class. I cannot figure out why in the world they would not be offering a language. Every single other school I have ever looked at had spanish. So I was kind of hesitant about the school to begin with so it did not take much for me to put it in the "no" file. I guess

Kristine

 

[Mkrop]

wow we are getting Spanish for the first time next year K-8 and it is treated like a special like PE or music I am excitcied and nervous about that bc of how DS5 will do with just plain K let alone Spanish too. Well maybe thanks to Diego and Dora that wont be a concern Up until now French was offered only as an afterschool thing as well.

The public schools in the area started offering Spanish about 2 years ago. I dont think the principal is too jazzed about it but she felt the need to compete. So we will see.

 

[suzct]

Subscribing! I am also in the process of looking at Private school since my DD is in a class in first grade with a ratio of 17boys to 6 girls. Very chaotic. We'll be visiting 3 Catholic schools this month. I never expected this to be such a traumatic decision. I really appreciate all the comments that I have read so far.

Suzanne

 

[Mkrop]

Subscribing! I am also in the process of looking at Private school since my DD is in a class in first grade with a ratio of 17boys to 6 girls. Very chaotic. We'll be visiting 3 Catholic schools this month. I never expected this to be such a traumatic decision. I really appreciate all the comments that I have read so far.

Suzanne

good luck in your search as well

 

[connorlevismom]

Oh you guys I have alot to share (mostly good) but I am going to tour the public school this morning at 9 am so I will wait until after that because I am sure it will just get worse instead of better in terms of me being confused as all get out as to what we should do with DD next year.

Also aliceacc and anybody else I am going to post our local schools test scores and I want you guys to tell me what you think. They just posted results for the Iowa Basic skills tests and I am looking at them and trying to decided what I think. Like I said before the scores are average, not the best (we have schools with almost 100% student pass/exceed ranks around us) but definitely not the worst either. Plus we live in GA which almost always ranks near the bottom in terms of the state rankings of schools.

What I don't like in the public school is the higher you go grade wise the lower the scores get (although not by much just a few % points but still) and their has been a slow decline in scores since 2003 (again a few % points but still a decline every year). Those to me are red flags.

So hopefully this afternoon I can post with an update on what I found so far but I thought to be fair and get a clear picture I need to go and visit the local public school since I have never set foot inside the place!

connorlevismom -- two things for me, I would want a playground too. I know we played on blacktop growing up and after a certain age a playground isn't manadatory but I think for the younger kids it is nice to have. Also if they aren't responding to you then I agree they don't want your business. I would probably just move on since you have several other options to choose from. My thought was when I read about them not responding was well what if you enroll your child in their school? Is it going to take repeated phone calls/emails for you to get a response after he is enrolled too? I am so glad you are sharing your experiences, it is helping me 100% -- TY

So how did the public school tour go?

Kristine

 

[suzct]

Hi guys,
My search for the perfect school has officially begun. DH and I visited a small Catholic school which had their open house on Sunday. It was really cute. Kind of out of another time. It is a k-8 with under 200 kids. One class for each grade. K-3 on the bottom floor with an art room. 4-8 on the top floor with a library/computer room. The older kids have lockers and locks are not allowed on them. That was refreshing. I got a really good feeling seeing all of the boards about Christmas and a big sign on the wall saying "God Loves You". It was a kind of comforting.
I think we are looking for a bigger school though.
Compared to the chaos of DD's school this was a welcome change.
I hope the bigger Catholic school in the area is the one, but Open House isn't until the 29th.
Anyone have some good questions to ask at the next Open House?
Thanks

 

[connorlevismom]

Hi guys,
My search for the perfect school has officially begun. DH and I visited a small Catholic school which had their open house on Sunday. It was really cute. Kind of out of another time. It is a k-8 with under 200 kids. One class for each grade. K-3 on the bottom floor with an art room. 4-8 on the top floor with a library/computer room. The older kids have lockers and locks are not allowed on them. That was refreshing. I got a really good feeling seeing all of the boards about Christmas and a big sign on the wall saying "God Loves You". It was a kind of comforting.
I think we are looking for a bigger school though.
Compared to the chaos of DD's school this was a welcome change.
I hope the bigger Catholic school in the area is the one, but Open House isn't until the 29th.
Anyone have some good questions to ask at the next Open House?
Thanks

I loved the fact that the lockers did not have locks too. It is refreshing to know that the kids can be trusted!

Personally, we have not done any open houses. All of the schools we are looking at with the exception of one do personal tours. I prefer that. You get a one on one with the principal, get an idea of what kind of person they are, get much more attention on your issues and you get to ask your questions without a ton of other parents wanting to ask questions.

Kristine

Kristine

 

[GatorGirl]

Sorry it has taken me so long to post a response guys. It has been a busy couple of weeks for us and we leave next Wednesday for our DD's first trip to WDW.

Okay so I have been to 2 of our 3 private schools so far and then the public school.

Our public school is exactly what I thought it would be. Just a little above average. It is a nice building with nice facilities and they do offer enough. However the test scores are marginal and falling (slightly) and the classrooms themselves didn't really turn me on at all. There seemed to be alot of combined classrooms (Kindy with 1st grade separated by a row of bookcases but still all in one big room) and the classes were large number wise and seemed really huge in those rooms that had the combined classes. However I was blown away by the public school library. It was goregous and huge. They had several reading spots around the bookshelves including a treehouse the kids could climb up into and read as well as several themed tents all around the room. It was the best looking library in a school I have seen in a long time. As we walked the halls I did see several students pulled out into the hallway being "spoken" too for one thing or another and some of the classrooms seemed a bit chaotic for the time (it was 9 am). But I just caught a moment in their day and it could have been anything.

I really liked the two private schools I have been too so far. Both are small with less than 500 kids in K-8.

The first one is Faith -- it is the farthest from where I live but had the nicest, newest facilities with their lower school (as they called) building being only 5 years old. Big bright classrooms, a computer lab with enough computers so all the students could take computer class at one time, Spanish beginning in kindy. They monitor the students pretty carefully and will allow them to take class with the next grade in reading and math if they are showing the skills to move up. They also have the older children come and mentor to the younger kids once a week. PE is 4 times a week, art is 2 times a week and music is 3 times a week.

The second school I toured is Midway -- it is the closest to where we live and also the most afforadable of the 3 we are looking at. They use A BEKA (sp?) which I think is a popular home school curriculum for alot of their studies as well as alot of Bob Jones material. The computer lab looked okay and although they don't really start the computers until 1st grade in this school, library was almost non-existent (a few bookshelves which doubled as a nursery for the church which is undergoing a major renovation) which I was disappointed in. They too had art twice a week, music twice a week including the option to have piano lessons taught onsite during the school day which I thought was great. They have PE 3 times a week I think and the PE coach was a young guy with bounds of energy. They placed alot of emphasis on physical and spiritual fitness in their tour. And in 3rd grade they start teaching Latin to the kids which DH loved because he had many years of learning Latin. They said they follow the classical education model and will get getting rid of both of their trailers (the 7th graders in one and the 8th graders in the other) when the new building is complete before school begins in August.

I haven't been able to get an appointment with St. Joseph's the third school on our list yet. They are having an open house next weekend but we will be in Disneyworld and they asked that we try to schedule something after the open house. However they encouraged us to apply without seeing the school first which I am somewhat unsure of doing. St. Josephs is a bigger school with almost 900 kids K-8. I have no idea what the classrooms look like although I know they offer a decent amount of extras like music, sports, etc.

So that is my update. Ask me questions, tell me what you think. I am pretty sure right now if I dropped DD in either Midway or Faith we would get a very decent education. Do you guys have any opinions on the classical education model versus anything else. How about ABEKA, Bob Jones, Saxon and other of those types of lessons/materials -- any thoughts on those?

I promise I won't wait too long again between posts!

Okay here are the websites of the schools if you want to take a look and give me your opinions!

http://www.midwayschool.org/

http://www.faithlcms.org/School/index.htm

http://www.cobbk12.org/~varner/

http://www.stjosephschool.org/

I am hoping for some unbiased opinions from you guys please!!!!

 

[GatorGirl]

Did I lose you guys because it took me so long to post?! Sorry!

 

[Aliceacc]

They are having an open house next weekend but we will be in Disneyworld and they asked that we try to schedule something after the open house. However they encouraged us to apply without seeing the school first which I am somewhat unsure of doing. QUOTE]

Why not apply? This is the time of year when they're filling their spots... you can always do the tour after you get home from WDW. At that point, you could always decide to withdraw your application if necessary. But at least you would have a spot in case it's the right school for you.

 

[Mkrop]

I didnt reply Gator Girl bc I am not familar with any of the acronyms and study methods you mentioned.

If you think this school will fill up I would apply like Alice said, you only have the registrationfee to lose possibly and I have found that in the scheme of things that this is worth the price.

I had a friend who was very torn btw preschools and I told he apply and both and then decide later. I mean one was $50 and one was $25. I told her we blow that kind of money on less important decision than school for our kids. The investement is worth the piece of mind.

 

[connorlevismom]

I didnt reply Gator Girl bc I am not familar with any of the acronyms and study methods you mentioned.

If you think this school will fill up I would apply like Alice said, you only have the registrationfee to lose possibly and I have found that in the scheme of things that this is worth the price.

I had a friend who was very torn btw preschools and I told he apply and both and then decide later. I mean one was $50 and one was $25. I told her we blow that kind of money on less important decision than school for our kids. The investement is worth the piece of mind.

Wow - that is cheap! Most of the school's around here have a $200-300 application fees!

Gatorgirl - I took a look at the websites and I like the last one the best. I like schools that talk about their test scores and such on the website. It means that it is something they are really proud of. I would steer clear of any school that does not use traditional teachings. Only because most likely that is not how they will learn in HS so to me it seems like a disadvantage.

These are JMO, remember. You need to go with what feels right.

Kristine

 

[Mkrop]

Wow - that is cheap! Most of the school's around here have a $200-300 application fees!

Gatorgirl - I took a look at the websites and I like the last one the best. I like schools that talk about their test scores and such on the website. It means that it is something they are really proud of. I would steer clear of any school that does not use traditional teachings. Only because most likely that is not how they will learn in HS so to me it seems like a disadvantage.

These are JMO, remember. You need to go with what feels right.

Kristine

WOw DS10's Catholic school has a $50 registration fee. Sorry I could see why you would hesitate for that kind of money.

 

[lastminutemom]

Gatorgirl

A couple of things -- why not consider Walker or Whitefield? If you are going to spend $ for private school, in my opinion, you should go for the best... but that is just my feeling. I suspect that the schools you are looking at are a lot less expensive, so that probably plays a big role in your decision.

One thing to remember is that church schools often fill up in K and then have spaces later as family's realize they can't afford it or move or whatever. So you could try the neighborhood school and then if you don't like it, you could have different options.

Can you afford private school for 13 years? If not, you might want to consider what I believe to be the most critical years -- grade 6 through 12. It always amazes me the numbers of families who run out of money by 9th grade, just when school matters the most, in my opinion.

Good luck.