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Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2002 > August > 19 > Entry
More choices put parents in study hall
By Scott Elliott
Dayton Daily News
DAYTON - When Tobi and Billi Ewing moved to Dayton from Fairborn two years ago, shopping for a school was one of their top priorities.
Their daughter De’ja was a straight-A student in Fairborn public schools and Billi was a graduate of Meadowdale High School, so they looked at public schools first. Valerie Elementary was their top choice and De’ja has been happily attending the school ever since.
But the Ewings aren’t done shopping. De’ja will go to middle school in two years.
“There’s no junior high I’d think of sending her to,” Billi Ewing, 25, said of the school district. “And that’s right around the corner.”
And the couple is already thinking about where 2-week-old Braelyn will go to kindergarten. The Ewings are not sure if they can afford private schools, and they’re waiting to see how charter schools perform during the next couple of years.
As the school choice movement takes hold in Dayton, the city’s fast-growing sea of education options - public, private, religious and now charter schools - parents face an ever-challenging decision on where to send their kids. They’re turning to friends, the Internet and new resources, like the Parents Network, for advice.
PACE, which offers privately funded scholarships for low-income kids to attend private schools, last year launched the Parents Network to help educate parents about their alternatives.
“Parents really don’t have the information they need,” said Daria Dillard Stone, program manager for Parents Advancing Choice in Education. “They’re overwhelmed.”
The city has a wide variety of choices for its 33,000 school-age children. In all, the city and Harrison Twp. now boast 80 schools - 37 in the school district, 19 charter schools, 15 Catholic schools, seven other religious schools and two private schools.
Dayton Public Schools, even with enrollment falling, remains one of the state’s largest school systems. But its share of the kids is shrinking. About 59 percent of school-age children attend Dayton Public Schools, while 23 percent go to religious or private schools. A network of Christian schools, begun in the 1960s, has flourished into one of the nation’s largest. Parents also can find Jewish, Lutheran and other religious schools within the city limits. About 1 percent are home-schooled.
The growth of charter schools, all of which have opened since 1997, has greatly expanded parents’ options. Dayton is the state’s top charter school market, and with nearly 17 percent of kids attending charters, the city has among the highest percentages of charter school students in the country.
The city’s combination of schools offer all sorts of educational programs. Dayton public schools expanded magnets programs 10 years and now all schools have magnet themes - arts, science, professional studies, integrated learning, computer technology, Montessori, traditional and cultural studies.
Religious schools generally follow self-made curriculums, while charter schools tend to favor school models based on new education theories, like the back-to-basics Core Knowledge program or the gifted-style accelerated learning model.
Parents say it takes time and research to find the right schools for their kids.
“It’s a very hard choice,” said Antoinette Gaston, parent of two.
Gaston picked the West Park Academy private school after an exhaustive search following a move from Akron two years ago. But she was back in the market this summer when the school closed. West Park is owned by the same people who operate the Richard Allen charter schools in Dayton.
A third Richard Allen campus opens downtown and West Park parents were invited to apply, but Gaston ultimately decided to look elsewhere. She found charter schools hard to judge because they are too new to establish much of a track record, especially for test scores.
Even though she teaches science at Meadowdale High School, 33-year-old Gaston said she wanted no part of the district’s lottery system for assigning schools. She didn’t want to wait to see if she got her first-choice school and risk losing a spot in private schools.
“If I can’t pick the school I want, forget it,” she said.
Gaston used the Internet to research private schools and checked out Spring Valley School in Centerville, Washington Twp.’s Miami Valley School, Dayton Christian Schools and Corpus Christi Catholic school. She liked the curriculum and academic success record at both Miami Valley and Spring Valley schools, despite tuition costs and a long drive from her home.
Ultimately, Gaston chose Spring Valley, a Seventh Day Adventist Church school, because it was cheaper - $3,066 annual elementary school tuition for those who don’t attend the church compared with $11,800 annually at Miami Valley School.
Cost is often a chief concern for many who are interested in private school.
In the city, tuition ranges from $2,280 at Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic elementary school to $5,490 at Chaminade-Julienne High School. Religious schools usually cut tuition - sometimes by as much as half - for members of their affiliated churches. Many religious and private schools give discounts for multiple children in the school and offer financial aid for those in need.
Gaston’s search for the right school soon will begin anew - the family recently decided to move to Tennessee - but she’s one parent who is prepared to shop.
“When you look for a school, you should know your child’s abilities and needs and look for a school that can meet them,” she said. “I wanted a challenge for them because they have good grades. I wanted to kick it up another level.”
For parents who are new to the school marketplace or are less experienced in shopping for schools, PACE stands ready to help them both with information and financial assistance.
PACE was begun in 1997 with backing from the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based education reform group run by Dayton native Chester Finn, and executives from some of the city’s most visible companies.
It now offers about 900 scholarships for private schools to families who demonstrate a financial need and has 872 families on its waiting list. Depending on family income, PACE will pay up to $1,875 toward the education of a student in elementary or middle school and up to $2,400 for high school students. The average scholarship is $1,348.
PACE helped make it possible for Tayna Peoples to send her daughter to Alter High School this year, after she finished eighth grade at a Richard Allen charter school.
The 42-year-old clerical worker wanted to avoid public high schools, because she had heard too many complaints about them. Peoples had hoped a comprehensive charter high school would have opened by now, but instead she looked at Catholic high schools. A PACE scholarship and financial aid made Alter her most affordable option, she said.
Peoples said her kids started in Catholic elementary school, but she was dissatisfied. She liked the uniforms and discipline, but wanted smaller class sizes. So a couple years ago, she asked around about other schools and a friend mentioned there was a Richard Allen school in the Edgemont neighborhood near her home.
“I value her opinion,” she said. “I went by word of mouth. I didn’t know what else to go by.”
Peoples said she is relatively happy with Richard Allen, even if she thinks charter schools have some bugs to work out. Parents should visit schools and not be afraid to look around if they aren’t completely satisfied, she said.
“I’m a working parent and my schedule switches a lot,” she said. “But if I was off on a Monday, I’d go in and have lunch with the kids.”
Other parents say start early.
Krishna Fowler just moved to Trotwood from Huber Heights and she’s already searching the Internet and working the phone for information about nearby schools even though her 4-year-old won’t start kindergarten for another year. She’s from Cincinnati and her husband is from Akron, so they aren’t well versed in the local education scene.
“I don’t really have clue as to what to look for,” she said. “That’s why I’m starting a year ahead of time.”
Fowler is a product of Catholic schools, so she’s inclined to start looking there. A co-worker suggested she try PACE for background on local schools, and she credited program manager Stone for talking her into considering public and charter schools. Now she plans to visit some Trotwood public schools to find out what it offers.
“She really opened me up to exploring all my options,” Fowler said.
Besides programs and curriculum, school calendars also are changing. About a quarter of Dayton Public Schools are on year-round schedules that start in mid-summer, an approach several charter schools and a few private schools also use.
Calendar was a nearly a stumbling block for the Ewings. They picked Valerie Elementary, but it’s on a year-round calendar and had started class a month before they moved to the city. The district’s registration office urged them to send De’ja to Meadowdale Elementary School, which was farther away but on a traditional school calendar.
Ultimately, the Ewings decided Valerie was best for De’ja, even if it meant working extra hard to catch up with her classmates. Billi Ewing says parents need to gather the facts and then trust their own judgment.
“Don’t go just by what people are saying,” she said. “Not all public schools are bad. And not all public schools are good. It’s the same with charter schools. It may be a lot of reading paperwork and looking at brochures, but you have to do it.”
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