Private religious schools get COVID boost

Brooke Schultz
Posted 2/7/21

It’s not that enrollment for small religious private schools has really grown this year — a year marked by limiting the amount of people who can be in a room and how close those people can be …

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Private religious schools get COVID boost

Posted

It’s not that enrollment for small religious private schools has really grown this year — a year marked by limiting the amount of people who can be in a room and how close those people can be — it’s that interest really has.

Typically at this time of year, Delmarva Christian’s Milton campus for students in pre-K through eighth grade sees about 22 applications. That’s more than doubled this year, with 56 people applying already.

“I think certainly the in-person education is something everybody’s thirsty for,” said Matt Kwiatkowski, head of school. “It’s really the healthiest for students, to be present in school, one-on-one with teachers and their peers.”

And Delmarva Christian, which has 452 students enrolled in pre-K through high school in its Milton and Georgetown campuses, has been doing that. Their classes are in-person, every day, unlike the majority of public schools which have to operate on A/B schedules, swapping out one cohort for another every other day or every other week.

It’s the same at Milford Christian School, which Pastor Dave Perdue said hasn’t seen any growth in enrollment, but has certainly seen a bloom in interest.

“In spacing the desks out, we could not get as many students in their desks in some of the rooms,” he said. “So the rooms filled up with students with lower numbers than they would have otherwise.”

One teacher shrunk her desk down to fit in another student, he said. The school enrolls 124 students.

A similar story is echoed at Lighthouse Christian School, a private school for children in pre-K through grade eight, in Dagsboro, said Barbara Hageman, assistant director. Adhering to the state’s guidance of small classes means that the school can’t grow its population too much. This year, it sits at about 250 students.

“We, in years previous, are not quite as busy with new enrollment this early,” she said. “But now, we’ve had increased requests for new enrollment for probably all of the month of January and even a few before December and we had to say, ‘You have to wait a while. We’re not quite ready to open that yet.’”

Educators have faced a fair share of hurdles amid COVID-19. In the public school sector, this year marked the first time in at least a decade Delaware has seen a decrease in public school enrollment, with a reported reduction of 2,407 students between Sept. 30, 2019 and Nov. 13, 2020, according to data released by the Delaware Department of Education.

Those students largely moved to other education options: home schools or private school. This year saw a surge in single-family home schools. There are 18,170 Delaware students enrolled in either a single- or multi-family home school or a private school — an increase of 2,439 students between the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years.

Thirteen new private schools cropped up between the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years, bringing the total in Delaware to 101. A reported 564 more Delaware students enrolled in private school this year.

Looking back

Declining enrollment is what snuffed out two religious private schools in the last two years, however. St. Thomas More in Magnolia shuttered following the class of 2020 graduation. That came about a year after St. John’s Lutheran School in Dover closed after its enrollment shrunk.

One of the key factors contributing to the decline of private religious schools is the rise of charter schools, said Dr. Bob Hampel, who teaches the history of education at the University of Delaware.

“When parents have more and more options, they can often find a charter school that matches their values,” he said. “And of course, there’s no tuition.”

Catholic school enrollments peaked in the 1950s, though many remained popular in cities through the 1970s and 1980s, Dr. Hampel said. Around that time, there were a number of fundamentalist Christian schools that began to grow rapidly, too.

“Many families thought that the public schools had abandoned morality,” he said. “And of course these are the years when school prayer is ruled unconstitutional, reading the Bible. So many parents said that public schools were unwilling to take a stand on issues of ethics, morality and the like and that’s when the fundamentalist Christian schools grew very quickly.”

Looking ahead

In 2021, the small schools’ ability to stay open for in-person classes could bolster enrollment in the future.

“I’m sure that that is a big factor because that’s what most parents who want to enroll, but are not currently enrolled, want is for the opportunity to be face-to-face, which we’ve been,” Ms. Hageman said.

The interest at Milford Christian came at the younger levels, Dr. Perdue said.

“I think that may be because the older kids can do a Zoom lesson or can do things on their own; they can follow instructions so much better than the elementary kids,” he said. “So most of our interest level was four- and five-year-olds all the way up through elementary, fifth or sixth grade.”

Mr. Kwiatkowski had a caveat to that, too, attributing the growth in interest to the current climate of the U.S.

“We tend to address a more conservative crowd,” he said. “And as our culture continues to change and public school adapts and modifies to that, you see the conservative families seeking education with us.”

“Question of the fit, family values and what the school stands for has long been essential,” Dr. Hampel said. “Now that’s also true in nonreligious private schools. The question of a fit, but it’s particularly true in the religious K-12 schools for sure.”

Historically, Dr. Hampel said, private schools in general have appealed to individual attention — not getting lost in a crowd.

“I think that’s a concern for many parents today, with virtual online instruction,” he said. “Although some of your private religious schools have classes every bit as large as a public school, there’s still a sense that there’s more individual attention.”

Mr. Kwiatkowski, who has also worked in public schools, said he expects public schools will be reeling from COVID-19’s impact for the next five years.

He said they’ve seen some public school transfers this year, driven by the students themselves.

“They recognize the gaps from last spring semester with the virtual learning,” he said. “If virtual learning is in the equation for public schools, I do think that they have some students who are going to long for more.”

Dr. Perdue noted that as a Christian school, which emphasizes the Christian curriculum at every level, it wouldn’t be a good fit if families are only interested in the in-person component.

“As a Christian, as a pastor, I think the religious side of it, that we need to turn to the Lord and trust that He’s in charge of all this, even though we don’t understand how, why; I don’t have all those answers,” he said. “If we get families that are interested in the Christian perspective, I think there is the possibility of a resurgence of Christian schools. But it’s hard to know.”

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