Is it really that hard?

Da Paper put a big photo of my old school on the front page today, as part of an article on private schools in the post-K world. Their thesis is that the competition for students is more intense this year because of the region's drop in population:

The four parishes that suffered the most from Katrina -- Jefferson, Orleans, Plaquemines and St. Bernard -- were home to 154 private schools with 52,527 students last year, helping put Louisiana, in percentage of all students, among the top in the United States for private school enrollment.

Several private schools are reporting diminished attendance at their open houses this winter, although Brother Martin officials were heartened at their Jan. 26 event to greet about 1,000 families, which they said was in line with previous years.

Orleans Parish has suffered a huge drop in population, but did the families with kids in private schools really leave the metro area? Brother Martin, Mt. Carmel, Dominican, Jesuit, and De La Salle all had 85% or better of their students return. The schools that feed the majority of the students to these high schools, Catholic elementary schools in Jefferson Parish, are all back at the same levels.

I wonder even if the smaller schools will have that hard a time. Sacred Heart Academy, Isidore Newman and St. Martin's Episcopal all have high pricetags. The folks who left New Orleans for the Astrodome weren't sending their kids to these schools anyway. Northshore private schools expect to see a boom, because so many St. Bernard and Lakeview residents relocated across the lake.

It's clear from the disastrous situation of the Orleans Parish Public Schools that the folks who didn't come back are the ones who used the public schools.

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