Private or public school? Find the best fit for your student, expert advises

When Kristen Perlmutter visited Pegasus, she knew immediately that she wanted to send her children to the K-8 private school in Huntington Beach.

“I went to listen to a panel of eighth graders speak, and afterward, I got into the car and said, ‘Oh my god, our kids are going to go here,’” said the Corona del Mar mother of three. “The students were so eloquent. Usually kids at that age are awkward, but they were speaking like seasoned politicians. I thought, ‘This is how I want my kids to act.’”

While Perlmutter’s decision to send her children to Pegasus was a relatively easy one, for many parents, choosing a school for their child — with considerations of class size, academic and extra-curricular offerings, religious denomination, location, price and odds of getting into a desired college upon graduation — can be more challenging.

In Orange County, more than 50,000 students were enrolled in nearly 300 private schools, K-12, in 2015, according to the county’s Department of Education, while more than 500,000 students attended nearly 600 public schools in the same year.

Justin Lee, founder and CEO of Premiere Prep, a Newport Beach-based college counseling service, said that there’s “no right or wrong answer” to which school a child should attend, and that families should focus on finding the best fit, especially when it comes to specialized programs or courses, such as foreign language, sciences or arts.

“I like to ask parents, ‘What is value to you?’” he said of his clients who ask him which school to attend — and if the price tag for private school is worth it. “‘Is it safety? Is it small class size? Or is it improving your child’s chance of getting into college?’ Your school choice really depends on what your ultimate goal is.”

Mohini Soni, a Newport Beach mother of three, said that for her, finding the right fit meant first figuring out what kind of learner her son is.

“He’s a very interactive learner,” she said of her son, who is now in fourth grade. “He’s the type of student who’s very engaged in the classroom. He has very high auditory learning skills. We always heard from his preschool teachers that he asks really great questions and that he’s an out-of-the-box thinker.”

“We want to seize this curiosity and build upon it; we didn’t want teachers to be like, ‘Oh, good thought, hold on to it.’ We wanted it to be, ‘Let’s explore that.’”

So Soni, whose children also attend Pegasus, decided that small class size and an auditory teaching style were top priorities in selecting a school. She recommends that parents talk to their child’s teachers to figure out what kind of learning style they have, and then finding a school that fits that profile, and also talk to fellow parents about their experiences with different schools.

Price is also an important — and often prohibitive — factor for many families.

The average tuition for private elementary schools in Orange County is $7,774, according to Private School Review, while the average for high school is $15,938. But tuition can reach as high as $37,700 per year, as in the case of Sage Hill, a high school in Newport Beach, and $23,350 for Harbor Day, a K-8 school in Corona del Mar.

But Lee, who also is an admissions reader for the University of California system, warned against assuming that expensive automatically means quality.

“There are some great public schools that are obviously free, and there are some private high schools that are very costly and might not necessarily yield much of a difference, if any,” Lee said, pointing out that college admissions evaluate students based on their context and their peers — so public school applicants are compared to other public school students, and private school applicants are compared to other private school students.

What’s most important, he said, is that students take advantage of their opportunities.

“It’s what you do in the school,” Lee said, “not the school itself.”

Caitlin Yoshiko Kandil is a contributor to Times Community News.