THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 3, 1996 TAG: 9609030041
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE ADDIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 158 lines
Private schools in this suburban city, taking advantage of a pair of seemingly unrelated cultural trends, are reporting sizable increases in student population and ongoing expansion projects to handle the influx.
Officials at religion-based schools and independent, nonaffiliated schools say that sharp growth in the number of children in Virginia Beach and the nearby neighborhoods of Chesapeake and western Suffolk is one reason their classrooms are reaching capacity.
The other trend, these educators say, is a belief among a growing number of parents that the private schools offer a stronger curriculum, tougher discipline and a grounding in moral behavior that the public schools are not able to match.
Precise figures on private-school enrollment are difficult to obtain. The schools are encouraged, although not required, to report their populations to the city school system, but many fail to do so, said a planner with the Virginia Beach school system.
This sampling of numbers, though, is telling:
Cape Henry Collegiate School, in the Great Neck area, has doubled in enrollment, to 800, over the past 10 years and has completed a series of major construction projects at its campus.
Catholic High School, the former Norfolk Catholic that moved to Princess Anne Road in Virginia Beach in the 1993-94 school year, has grown 20 percent in four years. With 450 students, the school is ``at capacity'' this year, a school official said.
St. Matthews School, in the city's far western corner, educates children from age 3 through eighth grade. It has more than doubled its enrollment in five years, to 560 students. Eight new classrooms will be completed in January, its principal said, allowing the school to empty a number of the trailers that have served as temporary quarters.
Additionally, private systems like Norfolk Christian Schools and Chesapeake's Greenbrier Christian Academy are opening and expanding elementary schools in Virginia Beach as a means of attracting students they hope will later attend their upper schools.
``Part of it is the growth in the whole area of Virginia Beach and Chesapeake,'' said St. Matthews Principal Barbara White. ``But it's also a combination of factors, of the morals that are taught in Catholic schools or private school, and a lot of people want to get back to that.''
Discipline and a low student-teacher ratio are strong selling points for the parochial schools, said Lisa Hamlet, director of development for Catholic High.
``They come here because this is Christian-based values and a smaller school,'' she said. ``And they get that all day, every day. We start off every day with a prayer and a scripture reading.
``We had been shrinking in population in Norfolk,'' she said. ``But since we've been in Virginia Beach, and so close to Chesapeake, we've had steady growth.''
The public schools have grown as well, but not at the rate the private schools are reporting. Over the past five years, the growth rate in Virginia Beach public schools has been about 4.6 percent, from 74,218 students in the 1992-93 school year to a projected 77,634 this year.
The public-school image has not been helped, said one independent-school administrator, by the widely publicized difficulties in the city system.
``They've been through what, five superintendents in the past few years?'' this official said, speaking only if his name were not published. That, and the recent trial of two School Board members on malfeasance charges stemming from the schools' financial problems, does not help the school system's image, he said.
``There's a lot of talk about education politically these days,'' he said. ``The public schools, sometimes fairly and sometimes unfairly, are under attack.''
Administrators with two parochial school systems based outside Virginia Beach said they were simply responding to demand in expanding in the resort city.
Greenbrier Christian, whose main campus is on Kempsville Road in Chesapeake, has opened an elementary school with 130 students in rented quarters at Princess Anne Plaza Baptist Church on Rosemont Road. They are looking for a site for a permanent school in that neighborhood.
``We really didn't have any goal to expand,'' said Greenbrier administrator Ron White, ``but we kept getting calls from that area.''
Opening a satellite school, he said, was ``more feasible than to bring that number to the main campus.'' The goal, he said, would be to enroll those students at the main campus when they complete elementary school.
Greenbrier Christian also has a satellite school in Suffolk, and White did not rule out further expansions.
``Right now,'' he said, ``we're staying with Suffolk and Virginia Beach. As it develops, as the satellite approach works, we may even build an elementary school in Chesapeake and allow the main campus to be just grades seven through 12. But that's off in the distance.''
Norfolk Christian, on Granby Street in Norfolk, is building its feeder-school system in Virginia Beach as well. Its Laskin Road school added a fifth-grade this year, and it has opened a fledgling pre-kindergarten program with Virginia Beach Alliance Church on Indian River Road.
That expansion was a response to demand, said Curtis Byrd, Norfolk Christian's director of development.
``The church came to us all excited,'' Byrd said. ``So we have a pre-kindergarten program this year located down there. At last count, I believe there were 10 students. . . . When the decision is made to grow the school, we'll add a grade a year. That's our long-term intent.''
The satellite schools, Byrd said, make sense because parents hesitate to bus smaller children great distances. When the students are older and ready for middle school, he said, Norfolk Christian hopes to keep them within its system.
``The thinking,'' he said, ``is that the schools reach out into the communities and have the school serve the family for the lower years, and perhaps the middle school. Then there's greater potential for those families to come into the main campus once it's time to look into middle school.
``It's at that age that the families really start to say, `Hey, is the public middle-school arena where we want our child?'
``So we're trying to get them in even earlier, in those foundational years.''
In their years of expansion, independent schools have tried to shake the image that they are an educational privilege of the well-to-do. With many offering scholarships and tuition-assistance programs, they are reaching out to a broader audience.
The National Association of Independent Schools, which represents 1,100 nonprofit, unaffiliated private schools, reported this week that their student population has risen 11 percent over the past decade. One in every six students in those schools is receiving financial aid.
Further, the report said, 17 percent of the students are minorities, up from 11 percent a decade ago.
It has become ``very clear,'' said Phyllis Sullivan, headmistress of Friends School in Virginia Beach, ``that the elitist part of it is long gone. The parents who send their children here do so as a sacrifice.''
Friends School, a Quaker-affiliated school with a population of 160, expanded this year to offer 10th grade. The school will decide soon whether to raise a new building to handle further growth, Sullivan said.
Dan Richardson, head of Cape Henry Collegiate, said his campus has grown steadily in the 10 years he has been there, even when the nation and the region were struggling through a recession. Its distinct character, he believes, has been the drawing card.
``A certain percentage of people will go to independent schools,'' he said, ``and the number of kids of that age is growing, so the schools will grow naturally to some extent.
``For us, though, we're a distinct school with a distinct mission and a track record that has appealed to people.
``And that's one of the unique things about independent schools: Each one of us has a mission, and we do things in our own way, according to our own particular philosophy.'' ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
GROWING: RELIGION-BASED AND INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS
Virginia Beach private school classrooms are reaching capacity
because of growing numbers of children now living in the Beach,
Chesapeake and western Suffolk.
Also, educators say there is a belief among more and more parents
that private schools offer a stronger curriculum, tougher
discipline and solid moral values.
Color photo
D. KEVIN ELLIOTT/The Virginian-Pilot
St. Matthews School in Virginia Beach has more than doubled its
enrollment in five years, to 560 students.
Photo
D. KEVIN ELLIOTT/
The Virginian-Pilot
St. Matthews School is adding eight classrooms, which will allow the
Virginia Beach school to abandon several trailers it has been using.
KEYWORDS: EDUCATION SCHOOLS PRIVATE SCHOOLS by CNB