Private Schools (Day and Boarding)

There have always been families who preferred to send their children to private schools for social reasons or because they respected the elite education a selective school could provide. These are still valid reasons for sending children to the top ranked prep schools. But there are other schools, and other reasons for considering private education, that can offer parents many options when the public schools are not working for their children.

Some children do exceedingly well in our public school systems, while others struggle and have trouble coping. For some of the latter, the right private school can be a lifesaver.

But how does a parent find the right private school? Since no one school can be all things to all students, the private schools have developed unique personalities to meet the needs of different children. Here are some examples of cases we've worked with recently where the match between the student and the school was critical:

• A very bright and sensitive ninth-grade boy was miserably unhappy in a school where the other kids gave him a hard time. The academic program at that level was limited and didn’t challenge him, and he had no friends like himself. We found a boarding school for him that has a strong music and arts program and where the students are as bright and verbal as he is.

• A sixth-grade boy with a slight learning disability, that was not severe enough to be addressed by the school, was doing poorly and had begun to act up, His teachers said, “He could do so much better if only he weren’t so lazy.” A private day school with small class sizes and a supplemental language-training program did wonders for him.

• A very bright tenth-grade girl who dances, sings, and wants to be a professional actress was impatient to begin her professional training and was neglecting her school work. We found a boarding school for her that provides a demanding academic program to challenge her intellectually and also offers a professional training curriculum in the performing arts.

• A high school girl who wants to ski competitively and a boy who dreams of being a professional soccer player will both be going to boarding schools this fall that will give them the opportunity to train for their athletic goals whole completing a college preparatory program.