Atlas of Private School Enrollment 23-24

How SFUSD's strengths and weaknesses affect private school enrollment

There were 23,964 students in 104 private schools in San Francisco during 2023-24¹. By comparison, there were 52,715 students in San Francisco public schools so private school enrollment represents 31% of the total. An unknown but non-trivial share of private school enrollment comes from outside the city so the the percentage of San Francisco students who attend private school is going to be somewhat lower than 31%.

Figure 1 shows the locations and sizes of K-8 schools² (click here for an interactive version). What do you notice? If we think of private schools as being the preserve of the rich, we would expect them to be concentrated in the richer parts of the city but instead they are spread everywhere except Bayview. To my eye, there are more private schools in the eastern half of the city than the west but they tend to be smaller. There seems to be a particular density in the Mission but, curiously, the Catholic schools there seem to be smaller than the Catholic schools elsewhere.

Figure 1: Size and Location of Private K-8 Schools

The high school map looks very different, as figure 2 shows (interactive version here). There’s a cluster in the north, another group in the southwest and, with the exception of ICA/Cristo Rey Academy, a void in the Mission.

Figure 2: Size and location of private high schools

What Changed in 2023-24

Enrollment across all private schools for 23-24 was essentially unchanged compared with 2022-23. A 2% increase in high school enrollment was balanced by a 1% decrease in K-8 enrollment.

The biggest gainer was Riordan, which added 95 to reach 1,150, a huge jump from the 669 that were enrolled as recently as 2019-20. Next came another Catholic high school, Sacred Heart Cathedral, which added 63 to reach a new high of 1,411. On the other hand, several Catholic K-8 schools saw significant drops in enrollment. St. Thomas the Apostle, which had 100 students in its last year, closed while St. Brigid lost 46 (41%) students, Mission Dolores Academy lost 32 (15%), St. James lost 25 (18%), St. Anthony lost 24 (13%), and Our Lady of the Visitacion lost 23 (10%). Making up some of those losses, St. Gabriel gained 59 (13%) and St. Thomas More 25 (11%).

The biggest mover among non-Catholic schools was the San Francisco Islamic School which jumped from 14 to 68 thanks to new premises. University High has been gradually expanding since the pandemic and added 29 (6%) to reach a new high of 481. Going the other way was one of the Stratford schools which dropped 20% to 162 and Cornerstone’s elementary school which dropped 15% to 173.

Largest K-8 Enrollments

These are the schools with K-8 enrollments of at least 400 students:

1. Convent & Stuart Hall: 744

2. International / French American³: 601

3. St Gabriel: 499

4. St Cecilia: 487

5. Lycée Francais: 458

6. Hamlin: 439

7. Friends: 433

8. CAIS: 431

9. SF Day: 422

10. Town: 416

11. Live Oak: 411

12. Burke’s: 401

The figure for Convent and Stuart Hall includes both the girls’ school (Convent) and the boys’ school (Stuart Hall). They used to report separate figures for each school but for the last few years they have reported a single figure for all four schools (i.e. two K-8 and two high schools). The total enrollment across all four schools was 1,198. Other large K-12 schools are French American / International (988 total students), Lycée Francais (620 students), and San Francisco Waldorf School (353 total students).

Largest High School Enrollments

High Schools with more than 400 students are:

1. St. Ignatius: 1,517

2. Sacred Heart⁴ Cathedral: 1,411

3. Riordan: 1,150

4. Lick-Wilmerding: 555

5. University: 481

6. Convent / Stuart Hall: 454

7. Bay: 448

8. Urban: 420

Long-Term Trends

One of the candidates for the school board in the upcoming election asked me recently what was the most surprising thing I’d learned from all my analyses. My answer was the trajectory of private school enrollment in the city. People often think that private school enrollment is up, but it isn’t. It’s down 10% since 2000 and 4.7% in the five years since 2018-19. By comparison, public school enrollment is down 13% since 2000 and 7.5% since 2018-19⁵.

Figure 3: Enrollment in Public and Private Schools, rebased to 1999-2000

As figure 3 shows, the trajectory of private school enrollment closely follows that of public school enrollment. This indicates that macroeconomic and population trends, and not competition between public and private schools, are the most important factors affecting enrollment. If competition were the driver, we would see enrollment in private and public schools moving in opposite directions.

The reason people think private school enrollment is up is that they see new private schools that are prospering. Schools that were founded this century and currently have more than 100 students include: Alta Vista, Brightworks, De Marillac Academy, La Scuola, Millennium, Presidio Knolls, Proof, San Francisco Friends, San Francisco Schoolhouse, and Stratford School. Others that existed in 2000 but have at least doubled in size since then include Children’s Day (66 to 394), Live Oak (189 to 411), and Sterne (56 to 180).

You can start a K-8 school with one teacher in one class. High schools are harder to get off the ground because students take multiple subjects, each of which requires a qualified teacher. High schools need scale from the start. The only high schools to be founded this century that have more than 100 students are Bay (which was able to get one of the Presidio buildings after the closure of the army base) and Jewish Community (which had a building purchased and renovated for it by a donor). The only high school that closed after having more than 100 students was Mercy (a Catholic girls school) but Riordan went co-ed around the same time and has expanded to more than compensate for the loss of Mercy.

Nevertheless, if we consider K-8 and high school enrollment separately, the numbers tell two very different stories. Private K-8 enrollment is down 21%, even worse than the 14% drop in public K-8 enrollment . But private high school enrollment bucks the trend and is up 21%, compared to a 12% decline in the public sector.

Figure 4: How enrollment in public and private schools has changed since 1999-2000

There are now more students per grade in private high schools than private K-8 schools. This was not the case twenty years ago when the high school sector was smaller and the K-8 sector bigger. As figure 5 shows, there’s a big jump in enrollment in 6th grade and a smaller jump in 9th grade.

Figure 5: Private school enrollment by grade

I stressed earlier that overall population trends were a more powerful determinant of overall enrollment than competition with public schools. But competition with SFUSD is the best way to explain the 6th grade jump. Most private schools are K-8. It’s SFUSD that distinguishes between elementary and middle schools. Whether you interpret it as SFUSD’s elementary schools being perceived as better (hence lower private school enrollment in grades K-5) or SFUSD’s middle schools being perceived as worse (hence higher private school enrollment in grades 6-8), it’s likely that the private sector enrollment pattern reflects SFUSD’s strengths and weaknesses.

This is not just perceptions. SFUSD really does have among the smallest class sizes in the state in grades K-3 only. This heavy investment in K-3 class sizes has improved its competitive position at the elementary school level while leaving less money available for higher grades which now look worse than their private school competition.

Enrollment by School Type

Thanks to all those thriving new schools I listed, enrollment in non-religious K-8 schools is up nearly 3,000 (57%) since 2000. But enrollment in Catholic and other Christian K-8 schools is down over 6,500 (47%).

Figure 6: Enrollment in private K-8 schools, by religiosity

At the high school level, enrollment in Catholic high schools has actually increased a bit while enrollment in non-religious schools is up significantly.

Figure 7: Enrollment in private high schools, by religiosity

One of the more interesting questions to ponder is how did the Catholic high schools not just avoid the enrollment collapse seen in the Catholic K-8 schools but grow. If the decline in religious participation was the driver, both types of school should have been affected. My working theory goes something like this:

SFUSD receives more than $20,000 per student. Most of the Catholic K-8 schools have quoted tuition rates in the $10,000-$15,000 range. The largest Catholic K-8 school, St. Gabriel, charges up to $12,453 but it can be a lot less based on parent participation in the parish and school and there are discounts for second and third children from the same family. St. Peter’s, in the Mission, charges even less: only $5,830. Even accounting for the central office overhead in SFUSD, it is clear that the Catholic K-8 schools have less money to spend than the public schools. With less money, they have to make compromises. They may have larger class sizes than SFUSD schools or they may not be able to offer the range of services that SFUSD can. Only those parents who value the religious education or the educational philosophy of the schools will choose to pay money to send their children there instead of to the free alternative.

In contrast, the private K-8 schools that have grown so much charge far more. La Scuola, an Italian immersion school in the Mission, charges $43,770 in elementary school. CAIS, one of the Mandarin immersion schools, charges $42,600. Altavista, in Portola, charges $39,900. Stratford, in Ingleside, is a comparatively cheap $26,480. I highlighted those four schools because they are all in⁶ former Catholic school buildings. They charge far more than the Catholic schools they replaced and use that money to offer a more enriched education with even smaller class sizes than SFUSD can offer.

Convent and Stuart Hall are Catholic schools that are priced like a non-religious private school ($39,920 in elementary school). It’s probably not a coincidence that they are two⁷ of the few Catholic schools not to have lost students over the years. With that amount of money, they can offer facilities and educational opportunities that may not be available in the public schools or other Catholic schools. and prospective parents are willing to pay for that.

Money also explains why the Catholic high schools are thriving. St. Ignatius, Sacred Heart Cathedral, and Riordan charge between $25,600 and $32,950. That’s substantially less than the smaller non-religious high schools like University ($63,460) or Lick-Wilmerding ($57,000) but it’s far more than SFUSD spends on its high schools. Lowell’s budget works out to around $8,000 per student. The extra money means they can offer things that SFUSD schools cannot. Again, parents are willing to pay for something provided they believe it’s better than the free alternative.

That’s not to say that the way to increase enrollment in the Catholic K-8 schools is to triple tuition. Most of the K-8 schools are affiliated with a parish and have a mission to serve the children of that parish. Such a price hike would push the schools out of the reach of the parishioners they are trying to serve. Their mission is not to serve rich families. But the current strategy is not working. Remember that figure 1 showed that the Catholic schools that were doing well were in the prosperous Sunset and not the majority-Latino Mission. There may be lots of Catholic families in the Mission but they cannot afford even the very low tuition of those schools.

San Francisco Schoolhouse is another new school in a former Catholic school building⁸ but its tuition is just under $20,000, far less than other non-religious private schools. It will be worth following to see whether that’s enough to allow it to provide an offering that is sufficiently differentiated from SFUSD for parents to be willing to cough up.

1. The CDE publishes summary numbers here. My numbers differ slightly for two reasons. I exclude schools that are registered in San Francisco but have no physical presence here and I include schools that have neglected to file their enrollment reports but which I know are still operating. In such cases, I assume their enrollment is unchanged from the previous year.

2. For Alta Vista and SF Waldorf, which report enrollment as one school but have campuses far apart, I used their enrollments by grade to allocate the correct number of students to each campus. For K-12 or 6-12 schools (Convent and Stuart Hall, Lycée Francais, International/French American, St. Ignatius/Fr. Sauer), only the K-8 enrollments are shown on the K-8 map and only the 9-12 enrollments on the high school map.

3. International is dropping the French-American name and will be known as International School of San Francisco going forward.

4. You could be forgiven for getting your Sacred Hearts confused. Sacred Heart Cathedral was formed after the merger of Sacred Heart High School, a boys school, and Cathedral High School, a girls’ school. Convent & Stuart Hall style themselves as Schools of the Sacred Heart and their website is sacredsf.org. Until 2003, there was a third Sacred Heart, a grammar (i.e. K-8) school on Fell St. in the Western Addition.

5. “Public school” includes both SFUSD and the various charter schools that operate in the city and which are all publicly funded. The charter school numbers include New School and KIPP Bayview Elementary which received their charters from the state not SFUSD but excludes the two Five Keys schools which primarily serve adults and primarily outside San Francisco. Maybe I should but I also don’t include the COE schools. Fortunately, their enrollment is too small to change much. Although public school enrollment is down 13% since 2000, SFUSD’s enrollment is down 18% because charter schools now teach a chunk of public school students.

6. or moving to, in CAIS’s case

7. I don’t know whether to refer to Convent & Stuart Hall as one, two, or four schools. Up until 2018-19, they used to report as four separate schools: Convent of the Sacred Heart Elementary, Convent of the Sacred Heart High School, Stuart Hall for Boys, and Stuart Hall High School. Now they report as one school, and seem to be managed as one school, but still teach boys and girls separately.

8. They are the current tenants of 735 Fell St, the former Sacred Heart school whose previous tenant was La Scuola. Education is a real estate business.