Pricey Private Schools Face Budget Headaches : Despite high tuition, schools must work harder on fund-raisers to meet expenses.

At Sierra Canyon School in Chatsworth, kids start on computers in pre-kindergarten. In the first and second grades, they’re putting together research projects, working with microscopes in laboratories and learning about scientific principles.

Nestled in a rustic area near the foot of the Santa Susana Mountains, the school has no more than about two dozen students per class, each with one teacher and an aide. There’s a full-time nurse and eight maintenance men for 500 students in preschool through seventh grade. The campus, decorated with drawings and crafts for an upcoming medieval fair, is immaculate. “You could eat off the floor at 3 o’clock in the afternoon,” crowed co-founder Howard Wang.

The price: about $7,000 a year.

Sounds expensive? Consider Meadow Oaks School in Calabasas, which charges $6,200 for preschoolers and $6,900 for kindergarten through grade six. Or Viewpoint School in Calabasas, $7,300 for pre-kindergarten through grade four; Oakwood School in North Hollywood, $9,750 for elementary grades; and Buckley School in Sherman Oaks, $8,200 for 3- and 4-year-olds, $10,400 for kindergarten through fifth grade.

There are 1,447 private schools in Los Angeles County, up from 1,238 a decade ago. But in the same period, total private school enrollment dropped 2%, to 211,657, while public school enrollment rose 17%, to 1.46 million.

Sierra Canyon, Buckley, Meadow Oaks, Viewpoint and Oakwood are among about 20 of the most expensive private schools in the San Fernando Valley area, and they boast waiting lists for pre-kindergarten and elementary classes. What’s more, given the high cost of real estate and lack of appropriate sites, it’s unlikely such long-established schools would be threatened by upstart competitors.

But there’s another lesson to be learned about these pricey private schools.

True, this quintet of schools charges a lot, but they also spend a lot on the very things that make them desirable: student-to-teacher ratios of no more than 10-to-1, computers in every classroom, security guards, the latest books and materials, and extra activities that cash-strapped public schools increasingly forgo.

But California’s lingering recession has increased the pressure on these private schools. Some parents are struggling to meet the $7,000-plus annual tuitions, prompting schools to boost the financial aid they dole out each year by double or triple what they spent a few years ago. Some selective schools, which have long prided themselves on receiving applicants strictly through word of mouth, have begun to advertise for the first time.

Despite the price tags, running an elite private school is “not a business to get rich in,” said Wang.

Aside from church-affiliated institutions, which make up the bulk of private schools, there are two types of private schools: privately owned ones, like Sierra Canyon and Meadow Oaks, and nonprofit organizations overseen by boards of trustees that hire headmasters to run them, as with Buckley, Viewpoint and Oakwood.

The nonprofit schools, even the most expensive, typically must rely on fund-raisers just to meet their annual budgets and pay for new facilities.

At 32-year-old Viewpoint, for instance, revenue from tuition and fees for its 580 students was $4.35 million in its fiscal year ended June 30, according to financial statements filed with the Internal Revenue Service. It was only with $258,727 in fund-raising and $75,544 in interest income that Viewpoint met its expenses for the year. Similarly, IRS documents filed in 1992 show that at the 61-year-old Buckley School, the $8.34 million in annual tuition and fee revenue for 750 students was augmented by about $500,000 in donations to meet the school’s operating expenses and to help pay off its mortgage.

Raising those extra funds is a dicier proposition these days because of the weak economy. At Viewpoint’s annual dinner-dance and auction, for instance, proceeds have fallen 20% the past couple of years. Like other schools, Viewpoint has money set aside from those years it manages a surplus, but its current $100,000 surplus fund is a small safety net.

“This is the risk of an independent school,” acknowledged Viewpoint’s business manager, Paul F. Rosenbaum.

Proprietary schools often make up operating deficits of their regular school programs by running more lucrative summer camps. Meadow Oaks in Calabasas even rents out its campus for corporate parties.

Proposition 174, the state school-voucher initiative that goes before voters today, could help private schools because it would give parents $2,600 a year per student to spend on the public or private school of their choice.

Many operators of private schools oppose the measure, however, because they believe it would damage public schools and lead to government oversight of private schools, which is now practically nonexistent.

Make no mistake, the owners and administrators of these high-priced private schools can, and often do, live quite comfortably.

For instance, Wang, of the for-profit, 16-year-old Sierra Canyon School, drives a BMW and lives in a five-bedroom Northridge home. Parents don’t begrudge him his lifestyle, he said, because they know their kids aren’t getting shortchanged.

Besides, said Ken Ketchie, who co-founded Meadow Oaks 30 years ago, without the profits from his school’s summer camp and corporate picnic program, “our salaries would be minuscule compared to what they are now.”

As for nonprofit schools, Robert Dworkoski, Viewpoint headmaster, earns just over $100,000 a year, and Buckley Headmaster Walter Baumhoff makes about $127,000. By comparison, principals in the Los Angeles Unified School District earn an average of $69,000 annually.

Ted Mitchell, dean of UCLA’s School of Education, said that private school administrators earn more than their public counterparts because they have exceedingly complex, high-risk jobs that require keeping parents and board members happy. If they’re not, a headmaster can find himself very quickly unemployed.

Mitchell believes that although some upper-crust private schools have been guilty of spending money on arguably frivolous items, like marble statuaries, for the most part they are fiscally responsible. “The money that’s spent in independent schools really does get to the kids,” he said.

One thing private schools don’t pay top dollar for is teachers, whose salaries still lag those of public schools. Los Angeles Unified School District teachers earn $43,400 on average per year. At Buckley, for instance, the median teacher salary is about $39,000.

Private school teachers need not be credentialed, a fact that their employers contend is irrelevant to the quality of teaching. At the top-priced schools, teachers are college educated, many with master’s degrees, school administrators say. Salaries are catching up quickly, they add, with annual increases far outpacing those in the public sector.

Sherry Banks, a USC student ombudsman who in her spare time consults with parents on choosing private schools, said some qualified educators are attracted to private schools even if it means less pay, because of less bureaucracy, a nicer work environment, smaller classes and more flexibility in teaching styles.

Despite paying teachers less, balancing the budget at a private school isn’t easy.

For these schools, even a waiting list is deceptive, “a kind of a moving, mythical thing,” as Ketchie of Meadow Oaks said. That’s because parents often apply at more than one school at once. By the time a school year begins, the lists tend to evaporate.

Even so, said Sierra Canyon’s Wang, “We need those waiting lists because we can’t afford to have an open spot in the school.”

For now, the top-drawer private schools keep classes full with their appeals to parents that college prep--even if they don’t call it that--begins when a child is barely out of diapers. They put computers in kindergarten and pre-K classes, and have separate computer labs.

Meadow Oaks’ computer lab, for instance, is equipped with 22 Apple computers. At the lab, kids receive instruction once a week in word processing and desktop publishing, which they later use for various class projects. By contrast, some public schools have only a few, often aged, computers shared by the whole student body.

Many of these private schools give even their youngest students instruction in such subjects as art history, drama and science. Physical education classes are taught by specialists. Buckley starts first-graders in French. At Meadow Oaks, second-graders have violin lessons.

“Parents are not asking for, nor are we providing just a day-care situation,” said Buckley’s Baumhoff. “These kids are being taught.”

Perhaps the biggest selling point of these private schools is their student-to-teacher ratios, which are no more than 10-to-1, compared with 30- or even 40-to-1 in many public schools.

Yet another feature that scores big with parents is safety. The high-priced schools have security guards. And by virtue of their selective enrollment, some say their campuses are kept free of drugs and crime. Viewpoint has a firm policy that any student caught using drugs is automatically expelled--no second chances.

It’s also hard to remain immune to the beauty and polished veneer of some of these campuses. Buckley is tucked away in a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood south of Ventura Boulevard, and has beautifully manicured grounds and well-kept facilities. Viewpoint and Meadow Oaks are on adjoining lots in the rolling hills of Calabasas. The latter even has a small replica of an Old West town that’s used as a play area.

In response to economic pressures, UCLA’s Mitchell sees private schools trying to become more efficient. But there’s a risk in that, he said, because parents are also turning up the pressure, asking for more and better programs. The last thing a school in the high-priced bracket wants is a perceived decline in quality.

It is a danger that private schools know all too well. Said Buckley’s Baumhoff, “I think our survival very much depends on our having a businesslike operation.”