Reply to Charlotte Private Schools

Forum Index » Private & Independent Schools

Reply to "Charlotte Private Schools "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm in Charlotte and have worked with most of the privates here (as well as Cannon School in Cabarrus County and Gaston Day in Gaston County), including the top K-8s.

I found Latin to be the most insular, and others here have said the same thing. The sort of place that if you didn't go to Latin, the parents who did will have no time for you. Beautiful campus, but hands down my least favorite because it's just so unwelcoming. They put a big premium on lifers, as well.

CCDS is a bit less insular, but definitely a lot of legacy kids like Latin. The middle school is a separate campus from lower and upper school. Some love that and some hate it (although the kids almost universally love it). The closest of the Big 3 to the old money neighborhoods.

PD is big into their sports. Some legacy kids but less than the others. Not quite as close to the center of things, but way closer than Latin.

For K-8s, the two best ones are Trinity Episcopal and Charlotte Prep. TES is downtown ("Uptown") which is super convenient for some people, but very small campus. They take the fact that they're Episcopal seriously; they're the only religious-affiliated top school, and they have weekly chapel and faith studies. Very welcoming, they place kids into CCDS, PD, and Latin for 9th every year. CP is close to PD, and uniquely among top tier privates, they have a Montessori early school and take kids as young as 2. Kids can do Montessori or traditional kindergarten, and then from first grade on is traditional. They also have good outplacement.

Charlotte Christian and Charlotte Catholic are definitely a step below CCDS, PD, and Latin for high school (the Catholics here are...... interesting). I'll admit I have no experience with Davidson Day and British International.[/quote]

Curious about Charlotte Christian - does it tend to be right wing / Christian conservative types, or not really?

And what do you mean when you say the Catholics in CT are interesting?[/quote]

Charlotte Christian definitely tends to be a good bit more of the "I LOVE JESUS!" types than the other schools. I'd say the vibe is way more nondenominational mega church than mainline Protestant. There aren't too many hardcore right wing MAGA types in Charlotte itself, but Charlotte Christian is conservative, and not in the business leaders/country club set way that CCDS, PD, and Latin are.

As to Catholics in Charlotte.....I've found southern Catholics tend to be [b]much[/b] more conservative than DC area Catholics (even discounting the fact that it feels like half of Maryland considers themselves culturally Catholic but politically liberal). All Catholic schools in Mecklenburg County are run by the diocese. For the past couple of decades there's been this simmering tension in the diocese and the schools between the old school conservatives and the more liberal cafeteria catholics who moved south. It burst out in the open a few years back, a more progressive-minded Bishop (a Franciscan born in Baltimore, in fact) was appointed by Pope Francis in early 2024. Now it's practically an all out war between the conservative and progressive wings of the Catholic church here. Schools are still pretty firmly in the hands of the conservatives. There was a big blow up when Charlotte Catholic High School switched its accreditation to Lumen, which was created by Catholic University. Previously accreditation was done through Cognia, which is much larger and not Catholic-only.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics