Private schools under pressure
With students looking for the right fit and families looking for the right price, Santa Fe institutions push to stand out, boost enrollment in an age of increasing education options
The Chinese fortune cookie slogan said it all: “At Desert Academy, all things are possible.” If you didn’t like that one, you could crack open another cookie: “At Desert Academy, the sky’s the limit.”
During a recent open house at the private International Baccalaureate school for grades 6-12, teachers and students were going all out to display its assets for prospective students and parents. It was a show — replete with Chinese takeout, a vocal performance of “Stand By Me” and panel talks.
Parents were ushered through four short presentations on the school’s philosophy, mission, and arts and academic programs. A few said they found it tiring and felt disconnected from their kids; others said it helped them better understand the philosophy
of the International Baccalaureate model.
Prospective students got a better deal: hands-on, mini-lessons with teachers in photography, 3-D filmmaking, French, Spanish and physics. Several said it helped them understand what the school has to offer and what they would be doing if they choose to enroll.
Fall is the recruiting season for Santa Fe-area private schools, which are making
aggressive efforts to boost enrollment in the face of a fairly stagnant economy and stiff competition from one another, as well as from tuition-free charter schools, including growing online programs. Desert Academy had 168 students last year. This year it’s at 155. Head of School Yann Lussiez, who stepped into the job this year, would like to see 200 to 220 enrolled.
Many of the students and parents who explored Desert Academy last week will continue to make the rounds, trying to find the right fit for the next school year — and one that comes with the right price tag. Private school tuition in the city ranges from just under $10,000 to more than $20,000 a year.
On Friday, Santa Fe Preparatory School held its open house event. This week, the Santa Fe School for the Arts & Sciences, a private school for kids in prekindergarten to middle school, will take its turn. The Rio Grande School, which serves students in pre-K to sixth grade, will welcome visitors next week.
Money matters
For parents searching for choices outside traditional public schools, there are plenty of options in Santa Fe. But there’s also pressure.
“It feels as though in order for my daughter to get an education, we either have to pay for it or she has to get her name pulled out of a hat,” said Jennifer Schlesinger, referring to the lottery system used by most publicly funded charter schools to fill available slots. Some of these schools, such as the Academy for Technology and the Classics and Monte del Sol Charter School, often see a couple of hundred students vying for just a few dozen open seats.
Schlesinger attended Desert Academy’s open house with her daughter Kaya, who is now a public school student, on Thursday and then attended Santa Fe Prep’s open house on Friday afternoon.
Private schools, both secular academies such as Santa Fe Prep and parochial schools like St. Michael’s, also are feeling the pressure. Following the 2008 recession, enrollment at private schools declined across the nation, a trend also seen in Santa Fe. While private schools enrolled more than 17 percent of the 22,000 school-age kids across Santa Fe County in 2009, census data show, that share had dropped to under 13 percent in 2015, the latest figures available.
A few private schools in the city are slowly turning the tide. Some are holding the line with stable enrollment. But a few continue to struggle with dwindling numbers.
The reasons vary, school leaders say. More school choices — including specialized programs in public schools — have increased competition. And money, of course, matters. Financial challenges are real, said Jim Leonard, head of school at Santa Fe Prep. “Middle-class income has not increased over the past 10 years, versus rising tuition at private and independent schools.”
Desert Academy and the Rio Grande School charge about $19,000 a year per student; Santa Fe Prep costs $21,000. The Santa Fe School for the Arts & Sciences charges $9,400 for elementary school students and about $11,200 for middle-schoolers. St. Michael’s High School costs $10,000.
That’s a big expense in a city where the median household income is just over $50,000.
The state spends an average of about $10,000 for each public school student in New Mexico, and parents don’t have to foot the bill.
That’s a point Santa Fe Public Schools Superintendent Veronica García likes to make. She has a new motto for promoting public schools in the district: “The tuition is right.”
A postrecession world
“Across the country, private schools are under stress,” said Nigel Taplin, head of the Rio Grande School. “And for private schools in small markets like Santa Fe, it’s not easy. The economy is not really growing.”
Taplin’s school is one of the more fortunate ones — after seeing flat enrollment of about 155 for several years, Rio Grande grew to 160 this year, about six short of capacity.
Myra McGovern, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Independent Schools in Washington, D.C., said the recession had a major impact on private schools.
“For many years, our schools did not have to work particularly hard in many markets to be fully enrolled or have very deep waiting lists,” she said. “It’s a very different market in the postrecession world.”
But there are signs of improvement. Following years of decline, she said, private schools across the nation have seen a slight increase in enrollment over the past two years.
In Santa Fe, some private schools have worked to increase enrollment through expanded tuition-assistance programs. or, in Rio Grande’s case, new academic programs.
Leonard said enrollment at Santa Fe Prep dropped from 360 about 10 years ago to 305 in 2013. That’s when school leaders launched an ambitious shortterm fundraising effort to provide aid to specific students for a limited number of years. A threeyear grant, for example, would cover a student looking for financial help for grades 10-12.
The plan paid off. Prep now has about 330 students, though Leonard said “340 is the sweet spot, where we want to be.”
The school’s Strategic Impact Fund for the increased aid will run out by 2020, however, unless Prep finds a way to replace the funding.
Leonard said about 40 percent of students enrolled at Prep receive tuition assistance, at an average of $11,000 per year. School leaders would like to cut in half the number of students receiving the help.
At Desert, 47 percent of students receive financial aid, while 35 percent get assistance at St. Michael’s and 30 percent at Rio Grande.
Private school leaders encourage parents to apply, regardless of their income. They tout their schools’ smaller classroom sizes, safer environments, creative and inquiry-based lesson plans, and freedom to create a program built around the student’s needs.
Such schools often — but not always — academically outperform traditional public schools.
Taylor Gantt, president of St. Michael’s High School, said that while enrollment is down significantly — falling from about 600 students in 2013 to 500 this year — the drop hasn’t affected student achievement. This year, he said, St. Michael’s students achieved a five-year high in Advanced Placement test scores.
A few years ago, the school decided to impose random drug testing, a policy that Gantt said cost it “20 to 25 kids right away.” It was a loss St. Michael’s was willing to live with.
“We do have less students,” Gantt said, “but by most educational metrics, we are stronger now than we were when we had more kids.”
Emphasizing independence
While the state’s struggle in the last decade to recover from the recession likely has been the biggest driver of declining enrollment at private schools, growing choices among publicly funded schools also could be a factor.
Along with Monte del Sol and ATC, which have proven to be popular, tuition-free alternatives for nearly two decades, the statechartered New Mexico School for the Arts, The MASTERS Program and a virtual charter school, New Mexico Connections Academy, have opened in more recent years with success.
At the same time, Santa Fe Public Schools has made efforts to expand options for parents and students, such as opening the Mandela International Magnet School for middle- and highschoolers, which aims, like Desert Academy, to offer an International Baccalaureate program. Last year, the district opened the Early College Opportunities campus, or ECO, an applied science high school program in which students earn dual-enrollment credits at Santa Fe Community College and the Higher Education Center. As students work toward a diploma, they also can earn associate degrees and trade certificates.
Several years ago, the district began opening a handful of K-8 schools as an option for students and parents wary of large public middle schools.
Superintendent García and some local private school leaders say the effect of these efforts is not yet clear. They only have anecdotal evidence of students choosing public programs over private schools.
Gantt, however, said the district’s new offerings are affecting enrollment at St. Michael’s.
“In the last seven years,” he said, “we are talking about the addition of eight new schools — if you count adding seventh and eighth grade to the K-6 model.
“If you saw eight more hotels open in town,” he added, “the other seven or eight would probably feel the impact.”
Leonard isn’t so sure that effect will continue. “Whenever a new school pops up, it’s like a new restaurant opening,” he said. “Everyone wants to go to it at first, but are you really getting what you want?”
Still, private schools have tried to set themselves apart from public schools, pointing out that they eschew multiple-choice standardized tests and don’t have to follow the mandates of either the local school board or the state Public Education Department.
Lussiez, at Desert Academy, told parents at last week’s open house, “If the state says, ‘We changed the science standards and you can’t teach that standard,’ we can say, ‘We don’t care.’ ”
Lussiez was referring to a recent uproar in New Mexico over proposed new science teaching standards that omitted key concepts. In response to the public outcry, the state is making revisions to the guidelines.
The fight to find a brand
For a private school to be successful, Lussiez said, it has to develop a brand that is easily identifiable to parents and students.
“If you say ‘St. Michael’s’ to someone in town, they say, ‘Oh yeah,’ ” he said, “If you say, ‘Prep,’ they say, ‘Oh yeah.’ But if you say Desert, you might get a ‘Huh?’ ”
Gantt agreed that a school has to find its niche. “Ours is collegeprep academics, faith-based education and significant athletics.”
Leonard said one attraction at Prep is the school’s long history of tracking its students’ progress after graduation — which colleges they attend and how they
fare academically. It keeps an eye on which prestigious colleges are aiming to recruit Prep grads.
While the International Baccalaureate program at Desert is what distinguishes it from other schools, Lussiez said many people don’t know enough about it. The school will begin holding sessions in November to explain the program, known for its rigorous curriculum, with an emphasis on life skills, intensive college-readiness classes and dual-language courses.
Staff and students also have begun developing another brand, he said — “Desertness.” Students explained the concept at the open house, saying it speaks to
the school’s ability to connect emotionally and socially with its students.
During their recruitment events, private schools work to capture the interest of prospective students. Ultimately, however, parents get the final say.
Hazel Blais, an 11-year-old student at Acequia Madre Elementary School, who has visited a number of private and charter schools, said that is OK with her.
“It’s a little bit scary and overwhelming to decide,” she said. “I’m not used to having a choice in my school.”