Pricey Private Schools Thrive as a Class Apart

Conjure up the perfect place for public schools. Safe cities. Well-to-do neighborhoods. And hordes of parents determined to give their children a better life.

Looks a lot like Ventura County.

But each year, about one in 10 local students forsake the county’s admittedly good public schools in search of something different, something more, even something better.

They flock to a variety of private schools--where annual tuition can cost more than a showroom Honda Accord--drawn by perks that public schools don’t offer: small class sizes, strenuous academics, an emphasis on Judeo-Christian ethics and more. The private school decision, said mother Elaine Shaw, turned out to be surprisingly easy.

Her son, high school senior Brian Shaw, was always bright and hard-working. Yet he wasn’t being pushed to excel in Camarillo public schools. So, four years ago, he applied to the world-renowned Thacher High School, snuggled in the scenic foothills of Los Padres National Forest in Ojai.

“I said, ‘Brian, I can’t afford this, and you can’t get in, but I’ll never forgive myself if we don’t try,’ ” recalled Elaine Shaw, a public school teacher in the Hueneme School District.

After a torturous spell on a waiting list, Brian did get in. His mother sold their house in Camarillo and bought a more modest one in Oak View. With financial aid and belt-tightening, she can swing the $23,000 tuition bill.

The benefits of a school like Thacher are countless, the Shaws say. With small class sizes, students get personal attention. Academics are rigorous. Activities--from kayaking and horseback riding to after-school chats with playwright Neil Simon--are plentiful.

A quintessential prep school, Thacher is on the ritzy end of the Ventura County private school spectrum. Across the county, other private schools--nearly all of them much less expensive--are educating about 15,000 students this year.

A total of 305 private schools--enrolling between 1 and 636 students each--filed private school affidavits with the Ventura County superintendent of schools office this school year.

They are as varied as they are plentiful.

Four out of five county private schools claim a religious affiliation: Seventh-day Adventist, Baptist, Catholic and Quaker among them.

The vast majority of county private schools--69%--have 10 or fewer students. Officially listed as private schools, they are more commonly called home schools, where parents tutor their children in kitchens converted into classrooms.

Private Schools Attract 10-11% of Students

Options are more limited for parents who balk at high tuition bills but don’t favor religious schooling.

Whatever shape, size or flavor, local private schools thrive, regularly attracting between 10% and 11% of county pupils. That is consistent with national trends, where one-tenth of all students attend private schools. In wealthier areas such as Ventura County, private school enrollment nudges higher, said County Schools Supt. Charles Weis.

“It’s not an indictment or criticism of public schools,” Weis said. “It says there are choices for parents and parents are exerting those choices . . . That’s American.”

It may not be an indictment, experts say. But the reasons people choose private schools mirror their complaints about public schools. That point is all the more salient in Ventura County, where public schools are afforded more advantages than elsewhere.

Depending on how public schools react to the trend, a thriving private school community can either threaten or strengthen public schools, according to David Marsh, professor of curriculum and instruction at USC.

“There clearly has been an increase in interest in private schools” in recent years, said Marsh, who studies school reform and the charter school movement. “There’s a feeling that kids in private schools will get a better education . . . And that students will benefit from a community with a definite point of view, a caring community where people work together.”

Those reasons--excellence, ethics and individual attention--are routinely mentioned by parents and children who stray from the public system.

Outside the library at La Reina High School, senior Caroline Prijatel toys with the hem of her blue, green and white kilt and explains that she was a big fan of public schools. Ohio public schools, that is.

When her family moved to the Westlake area of Los Angeles when she was 10, Prijatel signed up for public school.

“In P.E. class, I was No. 41,” she recounts. “I would sit on the floor on a spot marked 41. No one knew my name. They would say ‘Number 41, go get the ball.’ I was a number. I felt like I was in jail.”

Trying to re-create the family feeling of her suburban Midwestern schools, she enrolled in the Thousand Oaks all-girls parochial school, where the average class size is 25 and the student body numbers 615.

The idea of wearing a uniform didn’t thrill her. She wasn’t keen on the dearth of boys. And she isn’t Catholic. But Prijatel’s parents paid the tuition--now $3,800 a year--and sent her to La Reina.

“The class size is great,” said Prijatel, 18. “It’s not so small that you can’t have a good discussion, but the teachers aren’t forgetting people off in the corner.”

Her other concerns have long since melted away.

Uniforms Prevent Daily Dress Choices

The comfy uniform means she can roll out of bed and into clothes without a daily dress dilemma. At an all-girls school, no one has to worry about appearing “too smart” or being overlooked by teachers who favor boys. (In fact, she plans to attend the all-women Agnes Scott College in Atlanta next year.) An Episcopalian herself, the poised young woman is now conversant in Catholicism, Judaism and Buddhism to boot.

Religion, safety and academics spurred Camarillo mother Pam Sargent to pull her two children from public schools in February 1995.

At the time, she was worried about her son being near high school gang violence. Her daughter’s troubles with reading, which rendered her perky daughter sullen, also troubled her.

Sargent, a licensed vocational nurse, bought some Christian textbooks and set up school in her kitchen for Jeremy and Jennifer, now 16 and 9, respectively.

At Dove Christian School, computer whiz Jeremy is no longer held back by straggling, struggling classmates. He will take some community college classes next year to fulfill high school requirements, and he anticipates a career in law. Meantime, Jennifer’s reading has gone from below grade level to where it belongs, according to the Stanford Achievement Tests that her mother faithfully administers.

“I feel like they’re getting a better education,” Sargent said. “My son tells me that I’m harder than the public school teachers . . . The only thing my daughter says she misses is swapping lunches at lunchtime.”

Plus, the flexibility of home schooling means her children can meander through the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, watch whale migration or peer at fertile tide pools as often as they want.

Her kids still play with neighborhood chums after school. Both are active in Scouting. With children from about 80 other families in a home-schooling group called ACHEV (Assn. of Christian Home Educators of Ventura), Jeremy and Jennifer play sports in the park and go skating regularly.

While they are loath to admit it, many parents and students think private schools are simply better than their public counterparts. Standardized test scores tend to bolster this belief.

As one parent put it: “My feeling is, you get what you pay for.”

Religious schools, which typically cost $2,000 to $4,000 a year, post test scores somewhat higher than public schools do.

In 1996, according to the Princeton, N.J.-based Educational Testing Service, students in religious schools scored an average of 525 on the verbal portion of the Scholastic Assessment Test, out of 800 total points. Nationally, their average math score was 510. The corresponding scores for public schoolers were 502 verbal and 506 math.

In elite college preparatory--or independent--schools, scores run higher, averaging 547 verbal and 556 math.

The differences are more pronounced in California. State public school students--many of whom speak English as a second language--garnered an average verbal score of 490 and 511 math. Pupils in California’s religious schools posted average scores of 525 verbal and 515 math.

Ventura Unified Supt. Joseph Spirito said he would gladly stack up his schools to any private school.

“In a sense that comparison is natural and fair,” he said. “And in a sense it’s not. Remember, they operate under different rules and regulations. Public schools must--and should--accept all students whether they need special education, whether they’re handicapped, whether they need special services in sign language, or whatever. I applaud that.

“In a private school, you could be rejected if you don’t have a good academic record or if they have a disciplinary record. In a public school, we can’t, and don’t, and wouldn’t make that determination unless a child is a threat to others.”

Trend to Public Schools Claimed

In fact, Spirito detects a burgeoning trend back toward public schools. Spurring that trend is the state class size reduction and increased offerings for parents in the form of magnet, fundamental and charter schools.

“The more choices we give our parents, the more chances that they will choose public over private,” he said. “We can’t compete when parents send their children to school for religious reasons . . . That’s not what we’re all about.”

And there is the matter of money. Coffers brimming with tuition dollars and annual donations enable private schools to offer enviable student-teacher ratios, camping expeditions to the Grand Canyon, state-of-the-art computers, equestrian programs and on-campus rock-climbing wall.

Even the cafeteria cuisine is fancier at the 200-student lower campus of the bucolic Ojai Valley School, which accepts preschoolers to middle schoolers.

The school, which accepts both boarding and day students, lists an impressive menu: hearty lentil soup, seasoned couscous, beef and broccoli in oyster sauce, steaming pot stickers, fresh-baked bread and an endless supply of fresh fruit.

Clad casually in jeans, Patagonia Polarfleece pullovers and Doc Martens or hiking boots, elementary and middle schoolers at OVS sit in classes of six, eight or 10 students. Depending on a student’s age, and whether he or she is a boarding student, tuition ranges from $5,500 to $23,000. All students start taking Spanish in kindergarten. By third grade, every student has learned how to ride a horse--an exercise in the art of mastering something bigger than they are.

Their teachers, most of whom live on campus, know students’ names, hobbies, after-school activities, brothers, sisters and parents. Classes are small enough that a student struggling with eighth-grade chemistry will be spotted immediately. Intensive tutoring ensues.

“Of course [tuition] is expensive here,” said C. Michael Connor, the school’s director of advancement. “Student-faculty ratios are key here. That’s why we’re more expensive.”

Parents do dread writing the tuition check. But they say the school, which specializes in nurturing average and above-average students rather that Mensa members, is well worth the money.

“We make it one of those bills that has to be paid, like the car payment, taxes or the mortgage,” said Oak View resident Darlene Meister, whose daughters Whitney and Chelsea attend Ojai Valley School. “We don’t look at it as a luxury.”

Meister and her husband, who own an auto collision repair business in Oxnard, chose Ojai Valley because their daughters needed more personal attention to thrive academically and socially. In public school, the teachers were good, but dealing with discipline problems ate up a good chunk of the day.

“It was all my decision to come here,” said Chelsea, 11, a sixth-grader. “In Camarillo, the teachers were too busy with problem kids . . . Kids doing drugs or kids trying to set their desks on fire.”

The petite blond added: “I like it a lot better here. In public school, you have 32 kids in a class and eight are out in space, not paying attention. Here, if you have 15 kids in class, maybe one is out in space.

“You got away with a lot more stuff in a public school.”

Prep Schools Seek to Shed Elitist Image

Still largely populated by wealthy children, prep schools are working to shake their elitist image. Up to half their students come from middle-class families: mothers and fathers who skip family vacations, hit up their own parents and tap financial aid reserves to cover the cost of schooling.

Thacher senior Erica Moore, 18, is an example of the growing middle-class population at private schools. She attends Thacher thanks to A Better Chance program, which recruits qualified inner-city students to prep schools. Back home in Cincinnati, her family, neighbors and church members scraped together a tuition contribution, and she gets hefty financial aid.

Her academic prospects are high (she’s on Columbia’s waiting list), and the family atmosphere has made her feel at home.

“Because you’re here 24 hours a day, you make genuine friends,” she said. “Friends who see you laugh, see you cry, who know which boy you have a crush on.”

Even at less tony private schools, the atmosphere is a primary draw for parents.

In a Ventura industrial park across from a moving and storage business, the Quaker-affiliated Friends Elementary has little curbside appeal.

It’s a different story inside, where the morning gathering is just beginning. About 90 students sit cross-legged on the floor, below an oil painting of Jesus Christ, his arms outstretched.

They recite the Pledge of Allegiance, sing “America the Beautiful” and pray. One child asks the group to pray for his knee, which he scraped over the weekend. A young boy earnestly asks his peers to pray for his mom to get some rest. (A new baby has left her sleep-deprived.) Others fret over sick relatives.

The teachers, who also care for some students before and after school, clearly adore their students.

“They make great people here,” said Barb Zaksez, whose two 6-year-old twins, James and Jessica, attend Friends. Her older daughter Katie, now in public middle school, is a Friends graduate. “They start with these young lives and they make great people.”

A shared belief in Judeo-Christian ethics--rather than specific Quaker doctrine--strengthens the student-teacher bond, says Julie Andrada, a single mother whose second-grade daughter attends Friends.

“I do like the fact that they get religious--I don’t want to say training--but exposure,” she said. “Not being raised in a religious household when I was growing up myself, I’m grateful to have Courtney exposed to that. I think it’s good for kids.”

Many parents, Andrada included, believe that public schools are safe. But they suspect private schools are even safer. With their more intimate size and feel, private schools tend to remind parents of their own childhood education.

“I think in the ‘50s and ‘60s, public schools in California were a lot different than they are now,” said John Clay, whose daughter Anne graduated from La Reina in 1994.

All things being equal, La Reina parent Joannie Meister (no relation to the Oak View Meisters) sometimes wishes she could send her two daughters to public school.

“My husband and I have had that discussion, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if they could go to public school, if public schools were as good,’ ” she said of seventh-grader Kathryn and ninth-grader Erin. “But they’re not.”

USC education professor Marsh thinks that the words of parents reflect frustration with public schools. They also underline lessons public schools can learn from their private counterparts: lessons of flexibility, local control, lean bureaucracies and freedom from some mandates.

“I’m glad to have some private schools to show us the range of excellence,” he said. “Some interest in private schools has to come about because of dissatisfaction with public schools. I honestly wish more people in California would be dissatisfied--not to beat up on schools or teachers--but because when parents and kids are dissatisfied and willing to work hard, it brings about excellence.”

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Private School Enrollment

Although subject to recessionary pressures, private school enrollment across the state tends to hold steady at about 10% of the K-12 school population. Over the last decade, private school enrollment has grown at the same rate as public school enrollment. With its more affluent populace, Ventura County has slightly higher private school enrollment numbers than the state at large, as do Los Angeles and Orange counties.

LOS ANGELES

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County Public Private* Pct. public Pct. private 1995-96 1,508,589 216,442 87.5% 12.5% 1990-91 1,406,718 206,448 87.2% 12.8% 1988-89 1,333,445 204,731 86.7% 13.3% 1986-87 1,308,154 206,474 86.4% 13.6%

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ORANGE

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County Public Private* Pct. public Pct. private 1995-96 424,862 52,031 89.1% 10.9% 1990-91 375,537 43,903 89.5% 10.5% 1988-89 351,004 42,321 89.2% 10.8% 1986-87 342,116 42,690 88.9% 11.1%

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VENTURA

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County Public Private* Pct. public Pct. private 1995-96 124,253 14,233 89.7% 10.3% 1990-91 113,923 12,798 89.9% 10.1% 1988-89 111,328 12,681 89.8% 10.2% 1986-87 108,003 12,798 89.4% 10.6%

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STATE

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County Public Private* Pct. public Pct. private 1995-96 5,467,224 602,578 90.1% 9.9% 1990-91 4,950,474 531,489 90.3% 9.7% 1988-89 4,618,120 524,722 89.8% 10.2% 1986-87 4,377,989 531,183 89.2% 10.8%

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* Includes private schools with six or more students.

Source: California Department of Education

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Private School Enrollment

Testing Private Schools

When weighing the merits of private schools versus public schools, parents often look at testscores. In California and the nation, the few elite prep--or independent--schools significantly outscored public schools on the Scholastic Assessment Test, where the top score is an 800 on each of the verbal and math tests. Religious schools, which account for the vast majority of private schools, beat public schools on the 1996 SAT, but not by much.

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Number of Verbal Math Type of school test takers scores scores California Public 105,875 490 511 Religious 18,864 525 515 Independent 3,547 576 577 Nation Public 856,381 502 506 Religious 126,917 525 510 Independent 52,647 547 556

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Source: Educational Testing Service