CHECKING OUT : When Benefits of Private Schools Don’t Match Costs, Some Parents Are Finding Parity in Public Education

Leslie and Peter Schulman of Studio City found a way to enroll their two children in Sherman Oaks Elementary School three years ago after they pulled them from a private school in North Hollywood.

“I had a younger child starting kindergarten, and it was going to cost us $8,000 a year,” said Leslie Schulman, 40.

The Schulmans did their homework. They researched eight different public schools and even had their daughters, now 7 and 10, tested by an educational psychologist to make sure that the move to public school wouldn’t be detrimental. They were able to enroll their daughters in Sherman Oaks Elementary, four miles from their home, with the aid of a child-care permit, which authorizes a child living out of the school’s area to attend the school under the auspices of receiving child care from someone living in the area.

“There’s a lot of pressure put on in private school; it’s very elitist,” Schulman said. “There are drawbacks to going to school with rich, white kids every day, and you are not guaranteed a great education in private school.”

Schulman admits that part of her motivation to move her children to public school was financial. “Had I left the two of them in private school, it would have cost us $80,000 to send them to grade school. We’re well-off--my husband is a pediatrician in Encino--but it was restricting us,” she said.

Schulman, PTA president at Sherman Oaks Elementary, said: “Our parents are very committed to making public school work.”

Children Under Stress

Many parents are discovering that private schools aren’t all that they had hoped, said Joan Marks, principal at Carpenter Avenue Elementary School in Studio City. The children are under great stress and pressure to succeed, the schools are expensive, and the private curriculum is not necessarily better than what’s offered in public schools. Parents are beginning to look for more community-based environments that offer wider ethnic and economic backgrounds, she added.

Five years ago, Marks said, only seven of the kindergarten students at the elementary school lived in the neighborhood. The rest were bused in from other communities. This year, there are 83 “resident” students, and “80% of these community parents told me they had originally planned to go to private school,” she said.

The pressure was what made the Rev. Michael J. Carll, rector at St. Nicholas Episcopal Church in Encino, move his son Robert, 15, from the $7,750-a-year Harvard School in Studio City to Taft High School in Woodland Hills, near their Reseda home. When Robert’s grades dropped at Harvard, he felt a great deal of pressure from the school to remain active in baseball and water polo, despite his need to put extra time into his school work.

“In private school, everybody expects you to be the best. Everybody can’t be the best . . . but they don’t know that at Harvard,” he said.

“When Bob left Harvard, there was this incredible relief. He went from feeling like a pariah at Harvard to being a member of the in crowd at Taft,” Carll said.

“I’m a lot happier at Taft,” Bob said. “It’s a lot easier to make friends at public school--the kids are more open and there’s a larger variety of people to chose from.”

Now that the Carll family has had success with a public school, they are planning to pull their fifth-grade daughter out of St. Martin-in-the-Fields School in Canoga Park next year.

Carll believes that part of the stress that his son felt at Harvard was due to the unbelievably competitive atmosphere. “The parents are so competitive themselves, and the competition begins with just getting the kids into the school,” he said.

Carll said he wonders if the highly competitive super-prep schools are really the best place to receive an education. “The children don’t learn, they produce,” he said.

Even at the medium-priced, $2,200-a-year schools, such as St. Martin-in-the Fields, “there are a lot of parents who are asking, ‘Why should I spend $2,200 a year for an education that is not better than public school and not building closer ties with us and the community?’ ” Carll said.

‘Can’t Afford Tuition’

May M. Frye, principal at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, said the elementary school is experiencing a decline in admissions in the upper grades almost exclusively because “many of the parents we have dropping out are double-income earning families who have bought nicer houses and can’t afford tuition.”

Many public elementary schools are feeling a resurgence of interest in public education. “There’s a definite renaissance here; parents say we have more than they ever dreamed was available in a public school,” said Sally Shane, principal at Sherman Oaks.

Sherman Oaks has earned a reputation among parents in the San Fernando Valley for parent involvement and enrichment activities, such as art classes and an afternoon super school that offers 17 different classes from karate to sculpture four days a week.

One sign of the school’s ability to draw even from beyond its immediate community is that it has 158 child-care permits, while nearby Kester Avenue Elementary School in Van Nuys has only 27 permits on file.

What seems to be happening--and it’s true at schools such as Sylmar Elementary School (see accompanying story) as well as those in tony neighborhoods--is that more children are being enrolled in public schools or transferring to public schools from private schools than in the previous 10 years.

Distinct Trend

The enrollment statistics don’t tell the complete story, largely due to the rising population in the Valley. While districtwide statistics that record the number of enrollees from private schools have been stable--from 7,300 in the fall of 1986 to 7,800 two years later--many individual schools show a distinct trend back to public education.

At Sherman Oaks, for example, the number of children entering from private schools, not including kindergarten students, went from seven in the fall of 1986 to 34 two years later. And at Sylmar, enrollments from private schools went from one in the fall of 1985 to eight last year.

The national trend is similar. According to the National Center for Education Statistics’ Early Estimates Survey published in December, the number of public school graduates held steady between 1987 and 1988, while the number of private school graduates decreased by 3%.

But the impact, if any, on private schools in the Valley has been spotty.

Mimi Baer, executive director of the California Assn. of Independent Schools, whose members include what she calls the well-established college preparatory schools such as Buckley in Sherman Oaks, Campbell Hall in North Hollywood and Viewpoint in Calabasas, said that for these schools, “the only trend is more kids.” Egremont in Encino is closing this year and St. Martin-in-the-Fields has only 14 children in its fourth-grade classroom, but Buckley School and Harvard School have lengthy waiting lists.

Gradually Renewed Trust

Robert Fishman, principal at Dixie Canyon Elementary School in Sherman Oaks who taught at Lanai Street Elementary School before mandatory busing was introduced in the late ‘70s, said he thinks that the return to public education is a result of gradually renewed trust built since busing ended.

“At Lanai, we went from over 1,000 students before busing to less than 300 local kids in 1981,” he said. “Ever since, it’s been a very gradual confidence returning as stability has returned to the schools. What’s happened at Dixie Canyon is the return of the white middle class that can’t afford private school.”

Since December, Fishman said more than 38 children have enrolled at Dixie Canyon, partly due to a large number of apartments and condominiums that have been built in the area. Of the school’s 730 students, 150 are enrolled with child-care permits, the new sign of a school’s ability to draw students from the surrounding area and a developing competition for students among public schools.

Over the last couple of years, public schools--through PTA and booster club efforts--have begun to use more of the public relations tools once employed only by private schools.

Many hold kindergarten orientation, designed to help attract neighborhood students, and several provide brochures that describe the programs and opportunities offered. Parents today shop the public schools, making appointments with principals and touring classrooms to see what teachers and approaches they like best.

Shane believes that the biggest draw for parents is the strong parental involvement at Sherman Oaks Elementary, which includes parent classroom participation. “Private schools don’t usually value parental involvement as we do,” she said. Sherman Oaks has three active parent groups, including the School Site Council, an advisory group; the Sherman Oaks Parents Assn., a booster group, and the PTA.

Yvonne Chan, principal at Sylmar, sees three distinct groups of parents shopping for schools. “One group is shopping because the children are not doing well in private school; these parents tend to call in April and May, and they ask specifically about whether we have the resources to meet varied students’ needs.

“The second group we see are parents of fourth- and fifth-graders who are doing well, but their parents want to ease their transition to the bigger world of junior high,” she said. Parents in this group are also concerned about saving money and are starting to save for college. These parents, she said, have shed their concerns for extended after-school day care, often provided by private schools and more critical when the children are younger, and want to stop sheltering their children.

The third group Chan sees inquires any time from December to August. These parents are not quite sure what they want and are usually visiting private schools too, she said. “These parents ask about enrichment programs, motivation and ask things like, ‘Do you have a computer lab here?’ ” she said.

Chan said most school shoppers have questions about bilingual programs. At Sylmar, one-third of the students are limited-English proficient, a population that is increasing at the school at a rate of 15% a year; 70% of the school’s 976 students are Hispanic.

Chan said she tells concerned parents about the flexible approach she uses, grouping children with similar needs together, and shows them the classrooms in action. “Once they see the beautiful campus and the classrooms, we always get them. They’re all ready to sign up right then,” she said.