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| Statement Concerning School Size | ||||||||
PROPOSED 440 STUDENTS ON FOXHALL CAMPUS REPRESENTS SMALL SCHOOL SIZE |
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| Peter A. Barrett, Head of School | ||||||||
| St. Patrick’s Episcopal Day School is seeking a school size of 440 for Grades 7 through 12 on the Foxhall Road campus. I would like to set that requested school size into some reasonable context. I will not deal here with the traffic impact of a school with that enrollment, which has been handled with accuracy, clarity, and fullness in our traffic study. First, many of you know that high school reform is a hot topic these days. Discussion of high school reform quickly intersects with the literature concerning the effectiveness of small schools, so that much of the focus is on creating new, small high schools or breaking up existing high schools into smaller components. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the most significant private supporter of small public high school initiatives. In a 2002 article, the executive director of the foundation’s education section stated, “Researchers vary in how they define small schools, but from what we’ve seen, high schools with no more than 100 students per grade level create the kind of rich learning environment that leads to success.” St. Patrick’s proposes a high school of 320 students―80 per grade―by any measure a small school. (We arrive at the 440 with 120 students―60 per grade―in Grades 7 and 8.) Second, looking at the Washington-area independent schools that St. Patrick’s graduates have been attending―we looked at 18 schools that range in high school enrollment from 207 to 475 including a couple of reasonable comparables to which we haven’t recently sent graduates―we see an average high school size of 349 students, almost 30 students more than St. Patrick’s is proposing. (All enrollment numbers are for the 2004-2005 school year.) So the kinds of high school programs in which our families and students have been most interested tend to be larger, on average, than St. Patrick’s has proposed―not smaller. And, I might note, we deliberately omitted two schools to which some of our graduates have only recently moved on―the roughly 900-student Gonzaga and 1100-student St. John’s―so as not to skew the numbers. Third―and this point is related to the previous point―it’s important to recognize an inextricable link between size of school and the depth and breadth of the educational program that school can offer. An educational program of the depth and breadth that St. Patrick’s envisions on the Foxhall Campus requires a certain enrollment―certainly more than 300―to support the range of courses in the humanities―English and history―and languages, in the sciences and mathematics, and in athletics. Some neighbors have asked why we can’t be the same size as the Field School, which has a high school enrollment of about 225. Field has an excellent program―which I commend to all of you―that nonetheless has less breadth in terms of course offerings than St. Patrick’s envisions for its Foxhall Campus. They design a fine program that emerges in relation to the size of a school that has historically been quite small. Likewise, St. Patrick’s will design a program that is consistent with and represents an appropriate follow-on to its own existing elementary school program and that is, at the very least, the equal―in terms of depth and breadth and overall academic excellence―of the secondary schools that most of our graduates choose to attend―which, as we have seen, average about 350 students. That is, we’ll design a middle school and high school appropriate to St. Patrick’s, not to the Field School. My fourth and final point continues the preceding thought. The Grades 4, 5, and 6 classes on St. Patrick’s Whitehaven Campus―which represent the leading edge headed for the Foxhall Campus―average roughly 50 students per grade. Over time, we intend to keep all of the St. Patrick’s students who now must attend other schools―as well as build in some modest growth, as virtually every comparable school does (including Field), from Grade 6 to Grade 7 and/or from Grade 8 to Grade 9, so that we can also welcome Washington-area students whose families have chosen to wait until middle and high school to attend independent schools. Approving St. Patrick’s at a size smaller than proposed would require us to put out or send elsewhere students who are already with us rather than allowing them to continue in the place in which they have thrived for many years and not allow us to build in some modest growth in enrollment as virtually every other school does from Grade 6 to Grade 7 and Grade 8 to Grade 9. So:
. . . we seek approval of a school size of 440 students on the Foxhall Campus, 320 in the high school and 120 in the middle school. Back To Top |
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| Friends of St. Patrick’s Episcopal Day School LLC (“FOSP”) is a private, limited liability corporation which was formed to purchase the property at 1801 Foxhall Road, N.W. in order to donate it to the Vestry of St. Patrick’s Episcopal Parish (“Parish”) for the purpose of building a middle school/high school campus for St. Patrick’s Episcopal Day School (“School”). FOSP has donated approximately one-half of the property to the Parish and intends to sell the remainder to a for-profit developer for the construction of a residential development. Neither the Parish nor the School are members of the FOSP and neither have any control, direct or indirect, over the FOSP or the construction of the residential development. |
| News Updates |
| 4/20/04 St. Patrick's Statement |
| 4/21/04 Salvation Army Press Release |
| 2/1/06 Statement Concerning School Size |
| 4/19/06 Statement to FCCA Meeting |
| 7/11/06 BZA Approves St. Patrick's Plan for Developing 17.5-acres |
| A Message About Our Project |
| "...we intend to spend time understanding our neighbors' interests and developing our plans for this unique property at Foxhall, and we will share that work with our community and with the neighborhood as it progresses..." John Delaney, Chairman, Board of Trustees, St. Patrick's Episcopal Day School |