On a blackboard, four pupils attempt to solve codes that represent such things as months of the year, days of the week and popular rules of thumb. With nothing more than the first letter of each word to go by, the pupils break the codes in a matter of minutes.
This “math” lesson is rather unconventional, but so is the notion that these three boys and one girl represent the junior high grade levels of a school started this fall by parents. Ridge Academy, a private elementary school, operates out of the defunct elementary school of St. Donatus Catholic Church in Blue Island. Total enrollment is 31 pupils in 1st through 8th grades. Their parents pay annual tuition of $5,600, with a slight discount for additional siblings.
The idea for Ridge Academy was born last spring when 21 families became disenchanted with another local private school. New schools often arise out of such situations, experts say. “It’s always a matter of parents’ dissatisfaction with local options,” said Patrick Bassett, president of the Independent Schools Association of the Central States (ISACS), a membership organization serving 210 independent schools in the Midwest. “We’ve seen five or six new parent-started schools in the last year, and that’s just for ISACS.”
Dissatisfaction with local options also was the case with Lycee Francais de Chicago, a private school started five years ago by families who wanted a curriculum approved by the French Ministry of Education. Many major cities around the world have lycees, said Nancy Lerner Freg of Chicago, a parent founder. “It’s amazing there wasn’t one here.”
The school, with lessons taught for the most part in French, started with 135 students who had attended the Chicago International School, a private school that no longer exists. Freg explained that parents wanted a French educational experience more intense than what that school could offer. Although some students were American, most were French nationals. Now Lycee Francais serves 340 students, prekindergarten through level 12. Tuition ranges from $7,900 to $9,500 per year.
“The school has actually attracted a lot of French families to Chicago,” said Freg. “And there’s something compelling here for us crazy Americans as well, the caliber of the curriculum, the opportunity to be immersed in an intense language program and the chance to be involved in a committed school community.”
One key to the early success of parent-founded schools is a high level of parental commitment, said Bassett. “It’s not a case of, `build the school and the students will come.’ You really have to start with committed families who will provide the students.”
Ridge Academy enjoys high levels of parental commitment, said Principal Ken Koll of Evergreen Park.
“I was overwhelmed by the amount of work the parents had done by the time they came together and asked me to consider being their principal,” he said. “There were all these committees operating. This was all coming together so well and powerfully, it was very impressive.”
One parent teaches physical education at the school. Others have supplied legal expertise to negotiate lease and purchase agreements for a building owned by United By Faith Lutheran Church, 2501 W. 103rd St., Chicago, to which the school will relocate.
A parent designed the school’s Web site, and another obtained a donation of 16 new computers to be installed at the new location. Others have supplied architectural consulting services for structural modifications to the 103rd Street site. A couple of fathers and even 8th grader Sara Reddington of Chicago have spent Saturdays knocking out walls.
Other factors that determine the long-term success of parent-founded schools are planning and adequate capitalization, said Bassett. In the early stages, many such schools cut costs by investing in used furniture, by carpooling instead of offering bus service, by having students bring lunch instead of trying to serve it, by combining different grade levels to form one class and by compiling lessons drawn from a variety of sources instead of purchasing new textbooks.
Despite cutting those corners, capitalization and planning remain paramount, Bassett said, in order to cover the bigger necessities such as teacher salaries and building space.
The cost of launching Ridge Academy, about $200,000, included bringing the new building to code (installing a sprinkler and fire alarm system, for example), buying school supplies and furniture, and paying teachers for designing the curriculum. The funds came from family donations, extensive fundraising and grant money.
This is in addition to annual operating expenses, estimated at $150,000, to be covered by tuition. These costs include salaries and benefits for the nine staffers, rent, utilities, supplies and telephone charges.
Even more formidable than fundraising at schools that have passed the test of time is the challenge of fostering high levels of involvement among parents not involved in the school’s founding. The Ancona School, started by parents in Hyde Park in 1962, has seen a slight decrease in parental involvement in the school’s operation over the years, said director Bonnie Wishne. “But some of that is to be expected,” she added.
Even so, plenty of parents still exert influence. Leslie Hornig , a science teacher at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, serves on the science curriculum committee for Ancona.
“I found out about this school through other parents in Hyde Park,” said Hornig, whose two daughters attend. “It was clear they had given special consideration to this school. You have a real sense of community here that you don’t have at other schools.”
Hornig, who lives in Hyde Park, said parental input at Ancona ranges from assisting in the classrooms to arranging for guest speakers.
“There’s a lot of parent involvement,” she said. “That is not unique to independent schools. I would say the culture of this school is that parents feel they have access to teachers and administration.”
Parent-founded schools share common advantages with most independent, private schools, including lower teacher-to-student ratios, individualized attention, innovative instruction and very specific educational missions.
The Ancona School, with 257 pupils in kindergarten through 8th grade, was established with an emphasis on serving a diverse enrollment.
“That was very precious to a lot of people,” said Wishne. “The idea was to educate the child as a different kind of citizen of the world.”
As a Montessori school, Ancona promotes learning through experiences outside the traditional classroom. Tuition ranges from $8,600 for kindergarten to $9,800 for 8th grade. Partnerships with museums result in numerous field trips and hands-on experiences, such as the opportunity to catalog insects at the Field Museum. A typical school day in November included an assembly and ice cream social with a 100-year-old doll that once traveled the world with her owner, raising money for children’s charities. The doll came to Chicago from the Wenham Museum of Social History of Massachusetts, and the Ancona pupils recorded the occasion in their own journals and added to a journal that traveled with the doll.
That same day, Leon Despres, a 92-year-old former alderman for the ward in which the school is located, shared his experiences of growing up in a very different Hyde Park, one with lamplighters and steam engines.
What distinguishes parent-founded schools from all others, however, is the impact parents are allowed to have on their child’s education, according to principals at the schools.
“Every parent of a child here is a member of a not-for-profit corporation, with the capacity to vote for a six-member board and principal,” said Lois Cole of Chicago, a parent-founder and physical education teacher at Ridge Academy.
From May, when parents decided to form their own school, to early September, when Ridge Academy opened, parents worked feverishly to assemble a staff of nine. They charged the educators with developing curriculum that had to be solid and innovative, yet flexible enough to address individual needs. One 8th grader, for example, requires extra attention to prepare for high school entrance requirements, so her study program varies slightly from her peers. The Ridge staff developed a report card that shows not just overall grades for subjects but levels of mastery for certain areas within each subject.
Becky Binks is secretary for the Ridge Academy board and mother of 2nd grader Sam Donham. Having moved to the Beverly neighborhood from Hyde Park, where another one of her children had attended the Ancona School, Binks drew from her knowledge of Ancona’s operations, suggesting that Ridge Academy parents differentiate themselves from the teaching professionals. The Ancona School had met with success by positioning parents as policy makers, not educators. So far the arrangement has worked for Ridge, fostering what Koll describes as “an atmosphere of mutual respect and open communication.”
Founding a school can be exhausting yet rewarding, as Ridge Academy parents and staff have discovered.
“There were times when you would get so tired, you’d think you just couldn’t go on, but then somebody would say, `Hey that’s not so bad.’ And we’d all pick up,” said Koll. “We found out we need $100,000 for a new sprinkler system in the new building, and rather than getting discouraged, the parents just said, `OK, how are we going to do this?'”
They’ve held several fundraisers to chip away at the cost.
“If we had known how much work this whole thing was going to be, we might not have done it,” said Binks. “But it’s like childbirth because when it’s over, you say to yourself it was worth it after all.”
