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OC’s Private Schools See Rising Popularity

Parents face the hard choice of what school to enroll their children in.

Enrollment figures at local private school reflect how some Orange County families are increasingly opting to enroll their children in private over public education.

For the 2023-24 academic year, 50,294 students enrolled in a local private school, up 4.1% from the 2020-21 school year, according to data from the California Department of Education.

By contrast, Orange County’s public schools have declined 4.2% during the same period to 437,276 in the 2023-24 school year. Enrollment has fallen for seven consecutive years at OC’s public schools since the 2017-18 school year, when they reported 487,525 students.

Whether it’s for the academic rigor, smaller class sizes, onerous state regulations or faith-based education, private schools may offer something families can’t necessarily find at public schools.

The Business Journal’s Special Report this week focuses on education, including our annual lists of community colleges and MBA programs.

Here’s a look at four of Orange County’s top and emerging private schools.

Cristo Rey: The School That Works

Once a week, students at Cristo Rey Orange County High School go to a corporate job.

That’s on top of their regular academics.

Cristo Rey’s motto is “the school that works” because of its Corporate Work Study Program integrates professional work experience with schoolwork.

“They’re really building a resume that colleges want and that prepares them to succeed in life,” President Stephen Holte told the Business Journal.

The Catholic private school opened in Santa Ana in August 2023 and is in its sec-ond year of operation with 144 freshman and sophomore students.

It’s among 40 schools within the national Cristo Rey network, originally founded in Chicago in 1996.

Cristo Rey currently partners with 42 local companies in its work program including City of Hope, Northgate González Markets and apparel brand 5.11 Tactical.

They cover a wide range of industries to best fit a student’s interests and skills, Holte said.
Students can work entry-level jobs in the corporate offices of these companies, gaining four years of professional work experience on top of four years of college prep curriculum by the time they graduate, Holte said.

The school is intended to be an affordable option for families who can’t afford typical private schools, having implemented an income ceiling. Holte said the average family at Cristo Rey makes just over $50,000 for a five-person household.

Tuition costs $3,000 annually, but the school collects about $90 per month on average from families after scholarships and earnings from the students’ paid corporate jobs, the school’s largest draw, according to Holte.

Holte expects Cristo Rey to eventually grow to 400 students and welcome more than 100 freshman next year.

Besides the work study program, Holte said Cristo Rey’s expanded extracurricular clubs and faith-based environment are attracting more families to the school.

As founding president, Holte’s main goal this year is to find a permanent building the school can relocate to by 2026 before it has a senior class.

“We need that facility to become the school that our students deserve,” Holte said.

Fairmont: Oldest Preschool-12th Grade Private School in OC

Fairmont Schools, the oldest and largest secular, co-educational P-12 private school in Orange County, is keeping its five locations fresh.

Fairmont, founded in 1953, has three campuses including a high school preparatory academy in Anaheim, one North Tustin campus and its latest campus in San Juan Capistrano that opened in 2020.

Approximately 2,600 students are enrolled across all five campuses.

“We have seen a pretty steady rise,” Chief Operating Officer Mary Jane Miller told the Business Journal.

Miller said Fairmont has seen enrollment increase across all campuses except for the Tustin location, which has been at full capacity until recently undergoing an expansion.

The expansion was “a long time coming” for the Tustin campus, which opened in 1998 and has had long waitlists year after year, according to officials.

The expansion included the retrofitting of a 1.5-acre parcel of land for a new science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM) lab, library and media center, enhanced assembly hall and theater, as well as additional classrooms and playground facilities.

What differentiates Fairmont from other private schools is its counseling services, Miller said. The average student to counselor ratio is 500-to-1 compared to Fairmont which has a ratio of 83-to-1, according to Miller.

Fairmont is also one of the few private schools in OC to offer an International Baccalaureate (IB) program at the primary, middle school and diploma levels.

Fairmont previously was a family-owned school founded by Kenneth Holt before it was bought by International Schools Partnership in 2023 for an undisclosed amount.

The acquisition by ISP, which owns 87 schools in 26 countries, has created more international learning opportunities such as a Model United Nations and cultural exchange programs at Fairmont.

Tuition at Fairmont varies by grade level and campus, starting at $18,000 for full-time preschoolers going up to $31,000 a year for full-time high schoolers.

TVT: OC’s Inclusive Private Jewish Day School

TVT Community Day School aims to provide strong academics combined with solid character-based values.

“I think families are really looking for a school that helps ground their children in values they can live by even once they leave here,” Head of School Jill Quigley told the Business Journal.

TVT is among the largest Jewish community day schools in the U.S. with 856 students and 150 faculty and staff members.

The school is separated into three units: the “lower school,” which serves students in kindergarten through fifth grade, the “middle school,” serving sixth through eighth grade, and the “upper school,” serving grades ninth through 12th.

Enrollment has grown continuously over 10 years with the school receiving 400 applications on average every year, according to Quigley.

She attributes the steady growth and high-volume of applications to several reasons, including the school’s personalized approach to teaching.

Class sizes are on the smaller side with a 14-to-1 student to teacher ratio, making it easier for more individualized instruction, Quigley said.

TVT’s curriculum isn’t bound by Common Core State Standards (CCSS), so its academic programs aren’t based on the rote learning of subjects but rather the “why behind how it works,” Quigley said.

“We’re always looking for curriculum that’s going to stretch our students and make them think more deeply and have them take more ownership of their learning,” she said.

Yearly tuition at TVT ranges from$33,515 up to $42,700 depending on the student’s grade level. This year, Quigley said the school provided more than $5 million in need-based scholarships to students.

TVT was founded in 1991 by late businessman and Holocaust survivor Irving “Papa” Gelman, who created a textile company named Domka Inc. after the Ukrainian woman who hid Gelman and his family on her farm.

Gelman opened TVT in Costa Mesa be-fore it relocated to its current 22.5-acre campus in Irvine on land donated by the Samueli Foundation.

While the school’s made up of predominantly Jewish students, Quigley said they accept families of all faith.

About 25% of the school day is dedicated to learning Hebrew and Jewish studies with the rest of the day focusing on general studies.

Renascence School’s Trilingual Learning Model

Carrie and Thomas Mizera wanted to enroll their son in a school with a good conversational Chinese class but couldn’t find anything in Orange County at the time.

That’s when they found a multilingual immersion school on the East Coast and be-came inspired to bring the model back home.

“I was so excited. I had to bring this over to Orange County for my son, but then, as we started to share this vision, many people wanted the same thing for their children,” Carrie told the Business Journal.

Carrie, who speaks Mandarin Chinese herself, founded K-12 Renascence School International with the intention of teaching students the three most widely used languages in the world: Mandarin Chinese, Spanish and English.

Under RSI’s model, students learn all three languages at once by taking certain subjects in different languages.

Math and science are taught in Chinese, English and history are taught in English and Spanish is its own language class.

“We’ve seen students who had no language background in Mandarin Chinese or Spanish become proficient in the languages if they start young,” Carrie said. “It’s completely doable.”

By the time they graduate high school, students earn two Global Seals of Biliteracy in Mandarin Chinese and Spanish.

The curriculum itself is pulled from around the world. For instance, its math program is modeled after the one in Singapore.

Every year, RSI takes its students, accompanied by their families, on an overseas trip to practice the languages they’ve been learning. This year, they went to Taiwan and the year before they traveled to Spain.

RSI bills itself as the first trilingual language immersion school in Orange County.

It opened in September 2011 with 17 students and has since grown to 220 students made up of 16 different nationalities.

The school saw enrollment dip to 80 students in recent years due a transition period of the school moving from Costa Mesa to a temporary location in Irvine.

The lease for its original location expired and now RSI is looking for a permanent home.

“It was challenging for some of our families to relocate with us, which we under-stand, but we feel we’re at the right place,” Carrie said.

Carrie said RSI is also looking to build a scholarship fund to help families pay for tuition, which currently costs around $20,000 a year depending on the grade level.

Mike Harrah, a Santa Ana real estate developer who was influential in helping build the Orange County School of the Arts, is proposing to bring Renascence school to the former site of the Orange County Regis-ter.

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Sonia Chung
Sonia Chung
Sonia Chung joined the Orange County Business Journal in 2021 as their Marketing Creative Director. In her role she creates all visual content as it relates to the marketing needs for the sales and events teams. Her responsibilities include the creation of marketing materials for six annual corporate events, weekly print advertisements, sales flyers in correspondence to the editorial calendar, social media graphics, PowerPoint presentation decks, e-blasts, and maintains the online presence for Orange County Business Journal’s corporate events.
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