How to consider school size when evaluating private ES?
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Anonymous
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There are so many amazing private schools in this area, but so many feel really small: 15-35 children per grade. How important is having *more* than this number of students in a grade for a child in K-5? Does it start to feel stifling around upper ES? The only schools that seem to have > 50 students per grade are either public, parochial or private K-12s. We're not interested in public or parochial right now, though we'll happily re-evaluate in upper ES / MS. |
Anonymous
| It’s very school and class dependent but generally speaking, if you’re in a K-8 or even more restricted grades, like K-3, very small grade levels can be tricky if people start leaving earlier than the school goes until. And if you have a girl, and girls start leaving, (or boys) the classes can get gender lopsided quickly. I think it’s fine in elementary school but having too small of a grade level in middle school can be troublesome if your child doesn’t work well with those kids. There aren’t a lot of kids entering new in the later years unlike a K-12 where more kids join for MS, US |
Anonymous
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The problem is that the answer is just “it depends on factors you can’t know in advance.”
My kid went to a k-8 and had 23 or 24 kids in the class by 8th grade (started at 29 I think, in 5th, but some attrition during the covid years as a few students moved away). DC loved it, had a great group of friends, and the one or two problematic personalities left after 5th. It was a wonderful experience. It could easily have gone the other way — those problematic personalities tended to pull in several students who were fine if those influences weren’t around, but if those students had stayed, it could have been a much more difficult time, for example, without more students to buffer the problem group. Or DC might not have found the one really good friend in 5th that grew into a group of several good friends by 8th. There doesn’t have to be anything actually wrong with a school for a child to not really click with anyone and feel isolated and lonely. But there’s no way to predict any of that. |
Anonymous
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I agree it's hard to know in advance. We are in a K-8 with fewer than 20 kids per grade. It happens to be working well for my DC, who is in 7th. I am aware of kids for whom it is not working but their families don't want to make multiple moves. If your kid is young and there are no K-12s you're interested in anyway, I would say it's fine to start with a small school and just plan to move to a bigger school before MS. You can always choose not to move if it's going well.
Academically, the small school was able to offer two math tracks and also tailor work to kids on the very high and very low ends through individual pull-outs. It meets all our needs. However, there is not a choice of teachers if you just don't gel with someone. Socially, the very small class was fantastic until 4th, then got a little dicey in 5th and above. And by MS, your kid's social group is effectively just the half that is their gender, which makes it even smaller (it would be great if kids didn't split like that, but they do). It's great if your kid has friends but very hard if your kid is excluded or not finding friends. |
Anonymous
| I went to a K-8 (not in DC) with maybe 20 kids max in my grade and then a substantially bigger HS. Neither is inherently better or worse. They're just different. You can feel constricted in a small grade or totally lost in a big one. I really did, and do, have a special bond with my graduating 8th grade group, even if we got on one another's nerves too. I also think it was good preparation for just existing in the world. Most jobs I've had involve a similar number of co-workers who I see on a daily basis and who all may be very different from me, but we have to find the common ground and make it work! |
Anonymous
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OP here:
Thanks for these responses so far. My reaction as a parent trying to evaluate public vs private for my kids is that our public feels WAY too big for my rising K child (> 150 kids per grade), but the non-parochial privates feel SO small (15-35 kids per grade, which means only 1-2 classes per grade). But, I’m also an adult who hasn’t been my kid’s age for 30ish years, with a poor memory of my primary school years. Maybe a 15-35 kids-per-grade size is fine for a K-5 year old. Thoughts? |
Anonymous
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I can't speak to a class size of 15-35, but DS is at a K-8 where 3-5 grade have 40-45 kids each, so two classrooms per grade. K-2 is 40 per grade. It feels like the right size for him. In middle school, the class size increases to about 60 per grade.
Our public was much too big (~100 in his grade) and we felt he was often ignored because he's a high achiever who didn't need much attention. The smaller school (with high academic expectations), but not so small that there can't be multiple friend groups, has been the perfect fit. |
Anonymous
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I think two classrooms per grade is a nice size for elementary, because then there's some variety year-to-year and the school can operate a few different sports and other activities. But even that is too small for middle school when kids are ready for a bigger setting and more choices. Even for elementary I think 15 in a grade is too small for me. The kids do get sick of each other being together year after year, and one or two strong personalities can dominate everything. Sometimes kids have friendship trouble even when nobody's doing anything wrong, and in a school that tiny, there's no other friend options. And it's true they can more easily get out of whack with boy-girl balance and that's very hard to recover from.
Whatever level your kid is at academically, in a class of 15 that means they'll be with the same 5 kids most of the day and they get tired of that. Also it will really limit what programming is offered, and your kid might not find friends they really click with. That imaginary 16th kid might have been your kid's best friend. Sometimes really small schools attract a higher proportion of kids with special needs, or kids whose parents are in denial of special needs and think a small school or small class size will solve whatever's going on. If that's what you're looking for, great. But you should know it going in. You also have to evaluate the financial stability of the school. Really small schools tend to operate on a pretty thin margin and one or two unexpected empty seats can be a problem. Bigger schools are sometimes more stable. Of course, mismanagement will take down a school whether it's big or small, going to a big school is no guarantee. Also be aware that people will say "this small school is perfect for my small child" but then they may feel like a larger setting is better, or they may want to get on track for a particular high school, so they'll leave. And it can be hard to recruit new students in upper grades. So starting with 15 in K means you might end up with 10 or less in 7th and 8th. Fine if you like that, but I think a lot of kids would feel socially stifled. And it's a financial problem for the school. So really kick the tires here, read the 990 and annual report and whatever other information you can get. |
Anonymous
09:59 here, I suggest you dig into why you think 150 per grade is too many. Your kid is not going to be in class with all 150, after all. But a school with 150 kindegartners will have pressures on specials, on lunch and recess times, etc. Is that what worries you? Something else? I think this will help you figure out what you're actually looking for. |
Anonymous
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OP here: Thanks all. Love to hear from more parents whose kids actually started in a private school with fewer than 35 kids. How did your kids fare once they got to upper ES and middle school? Do you wish you’d sent them to larger schools?
Re: the poster who questions my concern about a huge grade (>150 kids) starting in K, my concerns are around feeling like a number at such a big school and insufficient supervision at recess. School principal at our local public said the min required adult-to-student ratio at recess was 1 adult to every 50 (!!) kids. How can that be that safe? |
Anonymous
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IME 15 is dangerous because that’s only 7-8 kids of your kid’s sex and if they don’t really click with anyone it can be socially difficult. 30 is much safer.
Source: three kids at a school with 15-18 kids per grade, two have lovely friends and one had an awful cohort and we switched to a slightly larger school (30 kids per grade) and it’s so much better. Kid still likes and hangs out with old classmates but comes home saying “I’m glad I’m not with them all day.” The less “normal” (in interests, aptitudes, etc.) your kids are, the more dangerous a small class is. |
Anonymous
That's totally not safe. But the problem isn't the total number of kids in the grade, it's the adult-child ratio and your deranged principal. You need to separate questions of adult-child ratio from questions of total size of school. They're very different things. 150 is a lot for lower elementary, but they don't necessarily feel like a number if the teaching is right. They spend almost the whole day in their classroom anyway. It's not like they're in a room of 150. And honestly, as a parent at a school with 50 per grade, bigger is appealing to me. Really big schools are cost-effective and can offer a ton of stuff, and there are more kids at your child's academic level and sharing their interests, whatever that may be. I don't believe my particular children would have been harmed by a school of 150 per grade, if adult child ratios were appropriate. You need to figure out whether your child *needs* a very small school to the extent it's worth accepting the tradeoffs, or if you're having a fantasy life in which a really small school can somehow also have the nice things that bigger schools have. There's really no way to do that, even with tons of money, because money can't buy people. |
Anonymous
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Just for context, OP: The three DC public schools with big K enrollments are Janney, Lafayette, and Yu Ying. They're all about 120-130. All are very high-performing schools with a mostly high-income student body and these schools are chosen by people who do have lots of other choices in the lottery or in where they can afford to live. Now, I agree that 150 is a lot, but this is just to make the point that plenty of people are fine with it.
Decide based on the needs of your particular kid. But definitely don't be thinking you can have the benefits of small and big at the same time. It just doesn't work that way. |