Private Schools in San Francisco

The decline of Catholic K-8 Schools

Sep 21, 2021

The most widely held misconception about education in San Francisco is that private school enrollment is rising. It is not. The decline in enrollment at Catholic and other religious K-8 schools has outpaced the rise in enrollment at secular schools and at Catholic high schools. Overall enrollment is down 2600 or nearly 10% since the turn of the century.

It is particularly noteworthy that enrollment fell in 2020-21 at private schools just as it did at public schools. The phenomenon of people moving out of the city during the pandemic appears to have affected both. However, these enrollment figures are as of the first week in October, 2020, a time when all schools, public and private, were still operating remotely. If parents did flee public schools for private because of SFUSD’s inability, or lack of desire, to reopen in-person, that would not show up in last year’s data. We’ll have to wait until Summer 2022 when the 2021-22 private school enrollment figures are released.

Here’s a map showing the 2020-21 enrollment at all private schools in the city. You can see details about each school by clicking here or on the map.

K-8 Schools

The total number of private K-8 students in San Francisco has fallen nearly 20% from just under 20000 in 1999-00 to 16000 today. Although enrollment in non-religious private K-8 schools is up by 50% from just over 5000 to over 7600 in that time period, the decline in enrollment at Catholic and other Christian schools has been far greater.

Catholic K-8 school enrollment has fallen by 43% since the turn of the century from about 11300 to 6500. Corpus Christi, Sacred Heart Elementary, St. Charles Borromeo, St. Dominic, St. Elizabeth’s, St. Emydius, St. Mary’s Chinese Day, St. Paul of the Shipwreck, and Star of the Sea have all closed since 2000. Further consolidation can be expected because most of the 26 remaining schools have seen enrollment decline.

Other Christian denominations have not been spared. Enrollment at those schools is down by nearly 50% from a peak of over 3000. Cornerstone Academy used to be the largest private K-8 school in the city but it’s down from over 1100 students to under 400, split across two campuses. Some smaller schools have closed while West Portal Lutheran is down 30% in three years

The secular K-8 sector is particularly dynamic with new schools starting every year and failing ones closing. 24 of the 50 secular schools from 1999 no longer exist but the total number of secular schools (49) is basically unchanged. The ones that closed tended to be small - the largest, Freeman School, had just 102 students. The number of non-religious schools with over 100 students has risen from 16 to 22. New schools since 2000 to cross this threshold are AltaVista, La Scuola, Presidio Knolls, San Francisco Friends, and Stratford School. They are joined by three which grew from under 100 to over 100: Children’s Day, Adda Clevenger, and Sterne School.

About 40% of the growth at private schools has come at dual language schools. In addition to the aforementioned La Scuola (Italian), and Presidio Knolls (Mandarin), there are new schools for German (German International School of Silicon Valley) and Russian (San Francisco Pacific Academy) while the existing schools for French (Lycée Francais and French American) and Chinese (CAIS) have all expanded.

Another thing that unites all the new private schools bar Friends is that they are in former religious school buildings. Alta Vista occupies the former St. Elizabeth campus at 450 Somerset. La Scuola occupies the former Sacred Heart Grammar School building at 735 Fell St and the former St. Charles Borromeo building at 3250 18th St. Presidio Knolls occupies the site of the former St. Joseph school at 10th and Howard. Stratford School is in the former St. Emydius building at 301 De Montfort Ave and the former Corpus Christi building at 75 Francis St and the former Lisa Kampner Hebrew Academy at 645 14th Ave. Brightworks hasn’t yet crossed the 100 student threshold but occupies the former Star of the Sea building at 360 9th Ave. Similarly, Sterne School occupies 838 Kearny, home of St. Mary’s Chinese Day School. The former St. Paul of the Shipwreck school is now home to the KIPP Bayview Academy, a charter school. 42 Waller St, formerly home to International Christian School, is now a campus of Chinese American International School but CAIS will be moving to the former Mercy High School campus. 495 Cambridge Ave, formerly home to the Fellowship Academy, is now a housing development.

This suggests that future private school expansion may be limited by the speed with which Catholic schools close and their buildings are taken over by non-religious schools. Private school administrators on the lookout for new locations should keep an eye on School of the Epiphany (Outer Mission), St. Anne (a prime location in the Sunset), St. Brigid (Pac Heights), St. John (Glen Park), St. Anthony (on the Mission/Bernal border), and St. Peter (near 24th in the Mission). Each looks vulnerable, with enrollment down more than half over the last decade or so.

High Schools

The private high school sector is much less dynamic. Although there has been some churn among very small schools (goodbye Lisa Kampner Hebrew Academy, Bridgement High, Challenge to Learning, Hergl, Joshua Marie Cameron Academy, Olympia Institute, S. R. Martin College Prep, Sand Paths Academy, Seneca Center, Voice of Pentecost Academy, and Walden Academy; hello Academy of Thought and Industry, Brightworks, Fusion Academy, Proof School), the only school of any size to close was Mercy High School, near Stonestown, which had 500 students as recently as 2010 but only 200 in its last year. The only high schools with more than 100 students to open this century are Bay, in the Presidio, and Jewish Community High School of the Bay, near the Fillmore District.

Unlike their K-8 counterparts, Catholic high schools in the city actually have higher enrollment now than they did back in 1999-2000, despite Mercy’s closure. Each of the other schools (viz. Convent & Stuart Hall, Riordan, SI, SH, and ICA) has expanded.

Enrollment at non-religious high schools is up 60% since 1999-00 from under 2000 to over 3100. Bay, the only new school, accounts for 400 of that increase. The rest is due to expansions, primarily at Lick-Wilmerding, Urban, International (aka French American), Lycée Francais, and SF Waldorf.

Private School Enrollment by Grade

Private school enrollment is lowest at the elementary school level, averaging about 1675 students per grade. It then rises to about 2000 per grade in middle school. Proof and St. Ignatius admit students starting in middle school while Millennium is only a middle school. Other schools have additional slots for the middle school grades. Non-religious schools get about 2/3 of the extra middle schoolers and Catholic schools the rest.

Grades 10-12 average about 1930 students, a slight increase over the middle school average. Grade 9 is an anomaly, with 150 more students than 10th grade and an increase of 200 from the 9th grade class the year before. Half the extra 200 went to Archbishop Riordan, which converted from a boys’ school to coed to accommodate students displaced from Mercy, which had been a girls’ school, and ended up enrolling twice as many new students as Mercy lost. Other schools that registered double digit increses in 9th graders included a mix of Catholic (SI and Immaculate Conception Academy) and non-religious schools and two new schools.

This increase in private school 9th grade enrollment was reflected at SFUSD which, for the first time ever, did not add students in 9th grade. Whether this reflects a permanent shift or was a one-off change due to the pandemic remains to be seen.

The Catholic High School Puzzle

Why have the Catholic high schools not suffered the enrollment declines that the K-8 schools have? In 2020-21, about 850 students per grade attended Catholic middle schools but 1130 students per grade attended Catholic high schools. Here are some possible explanations. I don’t know which, if any, are true.

It may reflect dissatisfaction with SFUSD’s middle and high schools. The increase in private school enrollment happens at the middle school level. Perhaps parents switch their children if they are unhappy with their feeder middle school or they don’t like their results in the city-wide high school lottery.
Students who attend Christian non-Catholic middle schools don’t have Christian non-Catholic high schools to attend. Those students may be more likely to attend Catholic high schools than public or non-religious private high schools. If true, this would be a dramatic change from what happens in regions with brighter inter-denominational religious lines.
The private high schools admit more students from outside San Francisco than the K-8 schools do.

Methodology Notes

Enrollment data for private schools in California is public information. All private schools in California with at least six students are required to file an affidavit annually with the California Department of Education giving their enrollment per grade and other basic information. Most schools file these reports every year but some have missed a year from time to time and some (e.g. University High) are repeatedly negligent. In general, Catholic schools tend to be more conscientious than non-religious schools about their reporting responsibilities.

I estimated values for any missing years by taking the average of the year before and the year after the gap year(s). The following schools did not submit an affidavit for 2020-21 but are still in operation so I assumed that their 2020-21 enrollment was unchanged from the year before: Cathedral School for Boys, German International School of Silicon Valley, Katherine Michiels, KZV Armenian School (KZV has not filed for five years), Laurel School, Meadows-Livingstone, and Millennium.

I also eliminated some obvious duplication. For example, Convent and Stuart Hall merged their four schools, two elementary and two high, into one in 2018-19. The four original schools and the one new school each filed a report in 2018-19 thereby double counting all 1200 students. Cornerstone and Lycée Francais had similar issues in previous years. The hardest case was Lycée Francais which reported 490, 536, 578, 0, 0, 1018, 662, 713, 697 in successive years between 2006-07 and 2015-16 during a period in which they also expanded to a second campus. I ended up assuming that the 1018 was an error of some sort and averaging the 578 and 662 for the intervening years.

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