Covid-19 Boosted Private School Enrollment

[Vle045]

That is interesting but doesn’t jive with what I have seen in my local area.

Yes, there were some parents who switched to private school, but it wasn’t in droves… because it doesn’t really work that way. By the time anyone knew what the public school plan was, most private schools were not taking any more new kids (They usually have a cap due to staffing and space).

The online public charter schools saw a sharp increase. Because a lot of people felt that if they had to keep kids in an online setting, they might as well go with the ones that had been doing it all along and not just throwing it together.

Ohio also got rid of a lot of the Ed Choice options. This allowed parents to send kids to private schools partially on the state’s dime. Depending on our “home school”, we could get $6,000 toward high school and I think is was $2,000 toward K-8. That is gone for families in most districts now. So that actually created a decline in private school enrollment for this coming school year as a lot of people lost a significant amount of aid.

I got a front row seat for most of this. I have been working as an Administrative Assistant in K-12 schools for almost 10 years. Both private and charter. I am a parent of a 14 year old. Most of this has impacted me as a parent and as an employee one way or another.