San Francisco is getting yet another private school.
Mission Montessori has announced plans to open in the 2017-2018 school year. It will be a K- 8 school. This brings to ten the number of new private K – 12 schools that have opened in San Francisco since 2010. (See complete list below.)
In addition, one new public charter school (The New School of San Francisco) opened in 2015 and an established private school (Live Oak) announced it plans to double enrollment to keep up with demand.
There’s been a lot of controversy with the confirmation of the new education secretary. But in uber liberal San Francisco, only 58% of its students go to public schools, and 1 in 3 go to private schools. The ratio is set to rise even more as new private and charter schools come online. The private school market is very vibrant in SF.
My kid’s public primary school is pretty good, but some of the private/charter schools on the list look pretty interesting. I wonder if there is a similar private school bonanza down in the South Bay?
I went thru the new school list opened since 2010. One does Italian (!) immersion and one does the usual Mandarin immersion. 3 or 4 have heavy math and science focus. One is “inquiry based”. One proclaims to provide “progressive education” (hippie?). And one is a co-op with very heavy parental involvement in exchange for a mere $10K tuition.
Even for private, can I assume there are ratings or surveys done (using some test scoring or whatever) so that you parents would be able to determine which are the good/bad ones? Otherwise, how would one know? If many of these schools are small or fairly new to the game, isn’t the data not credible to go on? How about private until high school and then you shoot for Lowell?
I think most people do the opposite: put kids in public school K-8, then go private in high school. That’s my plan for now too. I first learned about this way from a parent tour guide when we did the school tour at Alice Fong Yu. I asked her what about Lowell. She said Lowell is very big and some kids may fell lost in it.
How do parents choose schools? The more tiger parent type obsess over test scores. But many just talk to the teachers, tour the school and see if it gives them the right vibe. The newer schools won’t have enough of a track record to provide a objective measure of its quality.