Proud of my School!

As I previously posted, we attended my nephew's high school graduation. Two of my former middle school students and one of our former high school students graduated from THS the same night, along with over 274 others. Now, there were only 266 names on the program so I'm not sure where the other 8-10 students came from but that is incidental.

There were a few things that surprised me. This school honored their National Merit Scholar who was also one of the student speakers. We honored our National Merit Scholar as well, as our Valedictorian. Yes, we use the title. Oh, and their National Merit Finalist, the one who didn't quite make the Scholar cut, yeah... she was ours for more than half her high school experience but transferred for the big school's drama program.

This school had about a dozen students in the top ten percent category of WA state graduates. So did we... and they had one in the top one percent... hmmm, so did we.

This school hit their all-time-high for scholarships and grants at $1.8 million. Great. We came in just under $1 million... like $986,000 or something like that.

So what's the big deal? That school... has 274+ grads; we had 53 grads this year. 53! Our students came away with virtually the same number of honors in academics as one of the biggest high schools in the county! And we earned more than half the $$$ - even though - wait... (274 ÷ 53 = 5.16981132075)... Right... they are more than FIVE times the size of our school.

There are some out there who say small private schools are just taking people's money and handing out an inferior education. This is not true. Our small, private, Christian school is not cheap but the education is excellent, as demonstrated by the above stats contrasted with one of the most coveted public high schools in our county. We have eight large public high schools in our county and this particular one always has a waiting list for transfers.

I'm not here to rag on the public high school. I am sincerely happy for those students who were able to demonstrate their abilities in such a tangible way, but I would like those in our community who like to say private schools are not very academic to take note of the facts and quit the negative chatter. Because it simply isn't true. I am so proud of our school and our grads!