‘Families find us.’ Private schools in Charlotte capitalize on city’s growth
A pair of Charlotte-area Catholic schools are gearing up to celebrate massive, multi-million dollar expansions — solutions to the swell of students the system is attracting.
Charlotte Catholic High School — one of nine Mecklenburg Area Catholic Schools, or MACS — is dedicating a $21 million fine arts center and classroom expansion next month.
Christ the King Catholic High School is opening a $6 million athletic center and stage to allow officials to offer more extracurricular activities this fall.
The new buildings are a part of how MACS is managing its growth, says Gregory Monroe, who’s been the system’s superintendent since June 2020.
“We try to focus on people, not products,” he said. “We enroll families, not just students. We have waiting lists for about half of our schools here in Charlotte. The rest are nearing capacity.
“This is a good challenge to have.”
While Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools struggles with declining or near-stagnant enrollment across the district — it lost thousands of students during the pandemic — private and charter schools are attracting throngs of new families. The boon is coming from two sources: people moving into the county and those who grew impatient with how public schools were navigating COVID.
MACS expects more than a 15% increase in enrollment from the 2019-20 school year. Enrollment that year was 4,563 students. Projected enrollment for the upcoming school year is 5,330.
Schools such as Charlotte Country Day School and Charlotte Latin School also are seeing enrollment increases, and The Charlotte Observer reported that Mecklenburg County charter schools watched their student populations increase by about 2,000 students from 2020 to 2021.
“I can’t speak for all of the schools, but our parents realize it’s a good investment,” Monroe said. “Our parents are our best advocates. That’s how we find new families, how families find us.”
Family switches from public charter to private
Andrew Baich sat at the end of the family’s dining room table during his junior year of high school in 2021 for another day of remote learning. He hadn’t stepped foot in a classroom since March 2020 — his sophomore year — because of the pandemic.
“I was home, too, and I looked at him and said, ‘Wow, this is not the right situation for a young man who’s about to be on his own,’” mom Terri Baich said. “He wasn’t as cheerful, not as engaged. Academically, he was doing fine, but he felt he learned better in person.”
Andrew, who was attending a public charter school at the time, persuaded his family to help him look for another school because “I need to be better for college,” he told his mom.
Terri and Andrew began looking in January 2021. By the fall, Andrew was enrolled in Christ the King. He graduated in June and will attend the University of Georgia.
“Andrew came out, visited and said, ‘Mom this is it,’” Terri said. “It felt so comfortable. He was drawn toward that environment. It was peaceful. People were very kind. It wasn’t the closest location for us. It was a good 30- to 40-minute drive. But he never hesitated.”
They came to MACS. They stayed.
Across North Carolina, private school enrollment rose by 7,970 students in the 2021-22 school year, according to figures released this month by the state Division of Non-Public Education. The News & Observer reported that’s a number not seen since the late 1970s — when 11,764 additional students enrolled in private schools during the fight over public school integration.
Now, 115,311 students statewide attend private schools, a 7.4% increase from the prior year. The enrollment surge coincides with legislative changes that made it easier for families to get taxpayer money to attend private schools, the News & Observer reported. Public Schools First N.C. says the increase also is due to the coordinated push for privatization and increased funding for charters and vouchers.
In Mecklenburg County, private school enrollment increased 3.7% from the 2020-21 school year to 2021-22. Wake County saw a 7.7% increase. Union County saw the largest increase in the Charlotte area — 30.8%.
Shannon Drosky, director of marketing and communications at Charlotte Country Day School, says its enrollment has increased by about 3% since the 2019-20 school year.
“With the growth of Charlotte, more and more families are researching the many educational options the city provides,” Drosky said. “Our applications remain robust in the current environment, and admission to Country Day remains competitive.”
CMS’ enrollment dropped between the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years — from 146,809 students to 139,945. The district’s enrollment was 140,111 for the 2021-22 school year, and enrollment projections for 2022-23 are around 141,000, said Eddie Perez, a CMS media relations specialist.
Statewide, enrollment in traditional public schools has decreased 4.3% since the 2019-2020 school year. Data only show a slight uptick of 0.8% from the 2020-2021 year to last year.
“We really saw enrollment pick up when new families joined us during COVID,” Monroe said. “We tried to prioritize as normal of a learning environment for our kids as we could. The in-person experience can’t be replicated virtually. We were making sure kids stayed in schools.”
Monroe says it was important Mecklenburg’s Catholic schools stayed in-person during the pandemic when possible. CMS and many surrounding public school districts turned to fully remote learning, particularly during the early months of the pandemic.
“When it looked like we needed to, we did pivot virtually,” he said. “But we went back in-person when we could. We took the hybrid approach. It made a big difference.”
Monroe said 96% of families who opted to enroll their children in MACS over public schools during the pandemic have stayed.
Taking advantage of Charlotte’s net migration
During its search for a superintendent in 2020, Monroe was chosen from a field of about 30 applicants. He stood out because of his involvement turning struggling schools around, the Catholic News Herald reported. The search committee of clergy and laity said Catholic school enrollment declined even as the Catholic population grew.
MACS officials don’t consider their schools “private” because they don’t have an exclusive admission process. Catholic schools rely on tuition but offer financial aid, they say, to help all students have access.
Now, Monroe is figuring out how to ease waiting lists and keep the pipeline open to the ones that don’t.
“We are in the midst of long-range planning,” he said. “We’re looking at data trends, working with the county and city. We continue to expand outwards. We want to invite people to join us.”
The shift from shrinking enrollment to waiting lists is due in part to marketing, Monroe said.
He says MACS does a good job of sharing the good that its schools are doing.
“Even now, moving out of COVID, we’re still having new families join us because they’ve heard the good things,” he said.
Susan Carpenter, director of marketing and communications at Charlotte Latin School, says Charlotte Latin’s sixth-grade enrollment increased 10% in the past three years following the completion of a state-of-the-art upper school building and the renovation of a leadership center.
Its re-enrollment rate is 97%.
“Charlotte Latin School has a strong presence in the independent school marketplace,” Carpenter said. “Like our peer schools, Charlotte Latin has benefited from the city’s net migration. Charlotte is fortunate to have many excellent independent and private school options.”
So why hasn’t CMS student enrollment grown?
From its recent enrollment peak in 2018, CMS has lost nearly 7,000 students — or about 5% of its population, according to state data. Losing enrollment can wreak havoc on any public school district because the state provides funding to districts based on the number of students.
So far, the declining student population hasn’t been a financial issue. Charles Jeter, executive director of government affairs, policy and board services for the CMS board, says for the last two school years, the state has provided districts an ADM Hold Harmless provision so no funding was lost during COVID. ADM is average daily membership, or how many students a district has.
“The 2022-23 school year is the first year we’ll have to adjust based on funding changes from the state,” Jeter said.
Heather Koons, Public Schools First N.C. spokesperson, believes the pandemic is a big reason why CMS and other public school districts have lost students to private schools.
“What we hope is that it’s a temporary trend right now,” Koons told the Observer last week. “It’s pretty clear that an in-person education is better for most students. Public schools are now making that strong commitment to in-person (learning). Now, we’re hoping families are a little more comfortable putting their children back into public school and not hedge their bets in the private option.”
Koons says to reverse the tide and draw students and families back to traditional public schools, districts need to think more like private and charter schools and start promoting all of the positives.
“CMS, Union County (Public Schools) and many districts have wonderful magnet programs, career tech education, early-college pathways,” Koons said. “These have been around forever, but you don’t hear about them in the press. There’s a push to discredit public schools. There’s a false portrayal of the state of affairs of public schools. But what’s really happening? Public schools have been woefully underfunded for decades.”
Koons said public schools should more accurately be described as “citizen schools.”
“Public schools have to educate everybody,” she said. “Private schools don’t. Private schools can discriminate based on a number of things. Public schools can’t. Public schools are truly governed by public representatives the community elects. Let’s frame the narrative and really see what’s happening. Make N.C. see the strength of public schools.”
This story was originally published July 29, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
