Just so it's clear, the Barrie lawsuit that resulted in a reported case opinion was not a situation where a family attending the school refused to pay tuition. It was a situation where the family signed the Barrie enrollment contract, and then later decided to switch to a different school (presumably because they were admitted off the wait list at that other school). Even though Barrie was able to fill their spot with another student off its own waitlist, Barrie sued the family for the full year's tuition. Barrie won, because the court's attitude was "a deal's a deal," regardless of whether Barrie had actually suffered any actual injury. Here's the appellate decision -- http://mdcourts.gov/opinions/coa/2007/12a06.pdf

I don't know whether or not the other lawsuits where Barrie is suing follow similar facts. However, I wouldn't be surprised. I guess the lesson is that you shouldn't sign the Barrie enrollment contract if you're still hoping for a waitlist spot somewhere else!

PP, I know. I’ve talked to parents who don’t pay and they say glibly “times are tough”. My thinking is then don’t enroll your kids in private school.
One interesting/sad fact is that I know of two catholic private HSs that wouldn’t let kids take their final exams if the parents weren’t caught up with their bills. I thought this was sad that it’s made so public. There’s no excuse to embarrass the kids because of the parents’ actions and I don’t know if there is a recovery for the final exams. At our schools they don’t let the kids return after the winter break (never happens) or not return the following year.

More people than I'd expect try not to pay their tuition bills. I don't know about Barrie specifically , I know it happens.

PP’s post about Barrie and the lawsuits is interesting. I would guess one of the reasons why the number is so high is because as PP posted, people don’t plan on staying, so they must not pay their final year. (Generally, people do the PreK-K program or the MS program.) I guess people only pay if they want to stay. I imagine WES, due to their high turnover, also has a huge population of non-payers.
As far as a construction suit – that is laughable. Barrie’s MUS, including the new “building” is comprised of the temporary modules. There is no construction.

Anonymous wrote:How many cases do other private schools have? No way to tell whether 200 is a lot or a little without that context. Also, sometimes a lot of docket #s arise out of a single situation (let's say a complex construction dispute) -- so 200 doesn't really tell anyone anything.

Maybe you should look at the list before you reject it with hypothetical explanations. For context (picking just a couple other schools at random), I see only two cases where Norwood was a plaintiff, and four where Landon was a plaintiff. You can check other schools if you want, but I'll be surprised if you find one with over 20 cases as plaintiff. As to whether the many claims could arise out of a single dispute, the docket shows 200 cases with Barrie as plaintiff spread out evenly from 1987-2011, with a few stragglers in 1979-1980. I'd be surprised if that's from a single construction dispute. I do see a few duplicate docket numbers on the list, but even if you assume half are duplicates, that's over 100 cases as plaintiff, which seems like quite a lot.

Maybe there's a perfectly reasonable explanation; I have no idea. But if I were checking out the school, it's something I'd want to investigate further.

How many cases do other private schools have? No way to tell whether 200 is a lot or a little without that context. Also, sometimes a lot of docket #s arise out of a single situation (let's say a complex construction dispute) -- so 200 doesn't really tell anyone anything.

Anonymous wrote:Here's one thing that would make me nervous about Barrie: when I look at the Montgomery County court dockets (http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/inquiry/inquiry-index.jsp), I see something like 200 entries where Barrie School is suing various people. I have no idea what that's all about. I know there was some reported case in Maryland where Barrie sued a family that accepted the Barrie slot, and then went to another school. Barrie collected the full tuition from that family. I'd be really surprised if all 200 of those cases are examples of Barrie suing parents for tuition, but I guess stranger things have happened. It just seems suspicious, so it's something I'd want to investigate further.

It is pretty amazing how many cases they have

Here's one thing that would make me nervous about Barrie: when I look at the Montgomery County court dockets (http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/inquiry/inquiry-index.jsp), I see something like 200 entries where Barrie School is suing various people. I have no idea what that's all about. I know there was some reported case in Maryland where Barrie sued a family that accepted the Barrie slot, and then went to another school. Barrie collected the full tuition from that family. I'd be really surprised if all 200 of those cases are examples of Barrie suing parents for tuition, but I guess stranger things have happened. It just seems suspicious, so it's something I'd want to investigate further.

Yes, one or two kids could account for most of the Ivies. But take out the non-asterisked schools, and here's where kids matriculated:

American University*
Boston University*
Brandeis University*
Bucknell University*
Concordia University - Montreal*
DePaul University*
Goucher College*
Hampton University*
Howard University*
Longwood University*
Macalester College*
Marymount University*
Northeastern University*
The Art Institute of Washington*
The College of Wooster*
University of Maryland, College Park*
University of Virginia*
Warren Wilson College*

That's a respectable list for a very small school.

All the Ivies might have been one kid. Maybe they got nervous about it and picked a different school. Maybe a family situation came up and they chose to stay closer to home. Maybe they got a full ride to a non-Ivy and picked based on that. Or maybe they picked a smaller school because they could play a sport they loved there and wouldn't have been able to at the more prestigious schools. College decisions are complex.

Could be a scholarship issue, although who knows? I know a girl (not a Barrie student) whose father could have sent her anywhere easily, but she went to the place that offered her the most money, which was less prestigious than some of her other admits.

anonymous wrote:
Finally, I don’t believe the list of acceptances that were posted. 15 kids who want a school like Barrie choose that many colleges? Perhaps the PP believes it though.

I find the list hard to believe as well. From the website the * indicates where the student decided to go. With schools like Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, MIT and Cal Tech we're supposed to believe that all the kids that were accepted chose to go to UVA or Boston U instead? Unlikely.

Anonymous wrote:Barrie is not the school to choose if you are looking to cram in lots of AP's. Just not that kind of school - and I think that's ok. I don't think every private school has to put academic rigor and competition as their first priority. People leave public schools for a variety of reasons, academics is just one. There is plenty of room for private schools that put there emphasis somewhere else.

Especially on these boards, but in our society in general, we seem to put so much emphasis and pushing kids and schools academically - like something has less value, or is not as good if it isn't 'gifted' or 'advanced' or just plain 'hard' -- difficult classes, hard to get in, long waiting lists.. We wear the "It was hard, but I did it" as a badge of honor without fully realizing it was the journey to get there that was important.

The question was why is having only 15 kids might be a bad idea – not whether Barrie is a good fit for certain kids. AP classes aren’t like the gifted programs where parents are the driving force to enroll their kids. A lot of kids really want to take AP classes because they’re more challenging and therefore, more interesting to them. Too, the AP kids like being in classes with kids who take school seriously.
It’s interesting that PP mentioned public school verses Barrie. That was one of our complaints about Barrie – it was always “oh this is better than public”. We prefer a school where people said “this was the private school of our choice”.
Finally, I don’t believe the list of acceptances that were posted. 15 kids who want a school like Barrie choose that many colleges? Perhaps the PP believes it though.

19:16, that would be assuming a ton of overlap between those 15 kids in terms of schools applied to. I see a lot of diversity in that list in terms of geography, size of school, competitiveness of admissions. With 15 kids who have different interests, strengths, plans, you could end up with a list like that with each kid applying to 7 or 8 schools, which isn't crazy really. I see a set of schools that screams future engineer, I see a set of Ivies, I see a set of not very competitive "safe" out of state schools... I don't see anything here that would make me think 20+ schools per kid.

I know that list is acceptances, not matriculations, but it is still a scary-long list if it only represents 15 kids. Each kid must have applied to 20+ schools.