Harbor Day School could be the basis of a reality show for the elementary set in Orange County.
The Corona del Mar private school is where many of the county’s executives and professionals send their kids. Harbor Day draws support from parents, alumni and grandparents, including members of the Moiso, Irvine Smith, Ueberroth and Argyros families.
The 40-year-old school has all sorts of bells and whistles: a competitive robotics program, the latest computers, a library with a fireplace, a rich arts and music program, a greenhouse, cream of the crop teachers, a luxurious $6.5 million yearly budget and an eight-figure endowment.
Harbor Day is set on six lushly landscaped acres atop a hill off MacArthur Boulevard.
Hundreds of parents fight for 44 kindergarten openings every year. The school goes through eighth grade.
Rigorous academics are the focus. But parents say Harbor Day has a soft side.
“The culture of the school is academics in a loving environment,” said Sherri Worth, who has a cosmetic dentistry practice in Newport Beach and three children at Harbor Day. “It’s a big family.”
Small classes help. The campus has 408 kids and a 9-to-1 teacher to student ratio.
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Yearly tuition is about $16,000, on par withh other private schools.
Anne Rosenberg, who heads the parent council,Harbor Day’s version of a parent-teacher association,said she’s often surprised to learn what her fellow parents do for a living.
“I read about them in the newspaper,” Rosenberg said. “They’re very down to earth. You’d have no idea.”
One of Rosenberg’s daughters graduated from Harbor Day. The other is in fifth grade. Her husband, a lawyer, attended Harbor Day.
If you are a parent helping out at the school, you could serve lunch alongside a brain surgeon or a former speechwriter for President Reagan, she said.
“It’s impressive,” Rosenberg said.
First Lady Visit
Alex Uhl, owner of Irvine children’s book a Whale of a Tale Children’s Bookshoppe, recently helped bring former First Lady Laura Bush to the school. Uhl’s daughter went to Harbor Day.
Harbor Day nurtures its alumni, who are tracked through college.
Donation rates at Harbor Day are comparable to any high school or college alumni association, according to school officials.
“They have the most amazing alumni association of any organization I’ve ever been with,” said Ryan Steelberg, a Harbor Day graduate and chief executive of Irvine-based Brand Affinity Technologies, which links athletes and celebrities with advertisers.
Steelberg and brother Chad Steelberg, also an alumnus, are familiar Newport Beach businessmen.
The brothers sold their Newport Beach-based dMarc Broadcasting Inc. to Google Inc. in 2006 and recently founded Brand Affinity Technologies.
The Steelbergs helped build a campus greenhouse, which grows food that is donated to Share Our Selves, a Costa Mesa nonprofit.
“My brother and I have been supporting the school for years,” Ryan Steelberg said.
Harbor Day gave Ryan Steelberg an affinity for learning and more than prepared him for high school at Corona del Mar High School, he said.
“I walked in as a junior,” he said. “High school was a breeze.”
Eighth graders typically go on to Corona del Mar High or to private Sage Hill School. Some go off to boarding school.
At Harbor Day, kids start Spanish in kindergarten. In high school, they’re likely to skip first-year Spanish. Kids also take Latin and French. After school, kids can learn Chinese.
Many of Ryan Steelberg’s close friendships were developed at Harbor Day, he said, not at high school or college.
Now that his son is kindergarten age, he and his wife are hoping his son gets in this year or next.
“We’re excited about it,” Ryan Steelberg said.
Harbor Day gives preference to alumni and their families.
Admission is a competitive process of testing and observing prospective students.
“I’m not taking anything for granted,” Ryan Steelberg said.
He’s considering other schools as backups.
Pegasus School in Huntington Beach is up there, he said.
And “there are great public schools in the area,” Ryan Steelberg said
Harbor Day ranks among other top private schools in the county, along with Pegasus, Carden Hall in Newport Beach and St. Margaret’s Episcopal School in San Juan Capistrano.
Harbor Day attracts students mostly from Newport Beach because of its proximity. Kids from Irvine, Laguna Beach and other cities attend as well.
And that’s the only drawback, according to cosmetic dentist Worth.
“Everyone is white,” she said. “My kids go to school with a bunch of white kids.”
Worth said she exposes her kids to more diverse people outside the classroom.
She said she considered Harbor Day after hearing her orthodontics patients, many of them Harbor Day students, rave about the school. She chose the school because of its emphasis on academics.
“They learn more than I could ever imagine,” she said. “The science lab is over the top.”
The school was the first independent school in the county. It is accredited by the California Association of Independent Schools and the National Association of Independent Schools.
Board
A board of trustees governs the school.
The board is similar to any corporate board, said Scott Allen, president of the 20-member group.
Allen is a real estate investor. He sold his company, Citation Homes of Southern California, to Arizona-based Meritage Homes Corp. about five years ago.
The board’s responsible for managing the budget, the endowment and recruiting the head of the school.
Tuition covers about 96% of the operating budget, Allen said.
A small part of the endowment goes toward operations. The school holds an annual fall fundraiser, which raises about $350,000.
The fundraising helps increase the endowment, he said. Like other businesses and nonprofits, its endowment lost about 20% to 30% of its value in Wall Street’s fall meltdown.
The school paid off its mortgage in 1990.
Allen said he spends about a couple of hours a week working on board business.
Doug Phelps, an elementary teacher at Los Angeles Unified School District for seven years and a former union leader, heads Harbor Day School.
While working at Los Angeles Unified, Phelps also taught during the summer at a private school.
“If you want to compete in business, you attract the best employees,” he said. “We go after the best and the brightest teachers. With tuition like this, it’s not a place you’re going to be breaking people in. People expect the top professionals.”
Harbor Day has 61 teachers, administrators and other staff.
Teachers can make $70,000 or more, according to Phelps. They have health, dental and eye benefits.
Phelps said he lets teachers do their thing.
“If you have the best people you don’t want to put constraints on them,” he said. “If the ceramics teacher says I need four tons of clay, I say, ‘You will have four tons of clay.'”
Since arriving three years ago, Phelps added the robotics program and greenhouse, which teaches science and citizenship.
Phelps said he never feels tied to the budget.
If he deems a program or an item important to enhance the kids’ education, he goes to the board and members raise the money. Or the cost is reflected in the tuition, which typically goes up 5% to 7% a year. This year, it will go up nominally, Phelps said.
“I don’t have layers of administration,” he said.
The school recently bought a $5,300 Harkness table, which is used at many boarding schools to foster discussions.
Each seat at the oval table has a pullout desk and allows everyone at the table to see each other.
In music, children learn composers.
“If a teacher plays a couple of notes, my first graders will tell you that’s Gershwin,” Phelps said.
In art, they sculpt. In wood shop, they hammer and saw.
Public schools have discarded their wood shop programs. Phelps sees wood making as art.
“There are a lot of kids running around living very charmed lives who’ve never lifted a hammer or pushed a saw,” he said. “With all the academic achievement they get they can also hammer a nail with the best of them.”
Parents
Parents are active as volunteers in the lunchroom and the library.
Sometimes parent egos have to be tamped down. Phelps said he draws the line at the classroom.
“At any good independent school you have a parent body that is all chiefs and no Indians,” he said. “But when they’re here, they’re told their title, and it’s a wonderful lofty title of parent. We’re the educators.”
Parent Worth said she appreciates that she doesn’t have to be in the classroom or worry about her kids’ education.
“I have a gnarly job,” she said. “I’m making a difference in my field. I can’t go sit in my children’s school for three hours a day.”
