The Bell Family of San Francisco was looking for a private day school near home for their rising ninth-grade son, Sanders, when an older friend told him about his boarding school in the hills of New Hampshire.
“The friend came back with rave reviews and sold Sanders on it,” his mom, Michele Bell, recalls. “We said we would let him look at it, never imagining he would actually want to go. My husband took our son to see it … and realized what a great school it was and that it would, sadly for us, be the perfect fit for him.”
While it may seem more of an East Coast tradition, many Bay Area clients at least consider boarding school among the options when the time comes to choose a middle or high school, local admissions advisors say.
Boarding school “is something many of my clients have considered every year since I began this work over three decades ago,” San Francisco-based tutor and admissions counselor Scott Cowan says.
For some of these families, a parent or relative attended boarding school and loved it, but for others it’s a surprisewhen a boarding school rises to the top of their school list, says Tara Boland, a former boarding school teacher who is now an independent education consultant in San Francisco.
What Schools Offer
A key reason families send their students to boarding schools is they offer something the student can’t find at schools near home, says Boland, whose company, Spruce Advisors, works with students to find their ideal school.
“This could be a more traditional experience, since San Francisco local schools tend to be fairly progressive, and city schools offer a different experience from the suburban or rural experience,” Boland says. “They may be seeking a field of study, such as Japanese, philosophy or advanced math; a specific sport that is either not offered locally, not offered through the school, or requires a lot of driving; an activity or a more outdoorsy experience that can be hard to find in the city.”
Boarding School Primer
For families making a choice about their child’s next school, there are several things to think about when considering boarding school as well as how to search for the right 24/7, home-sweet-school for your student.
In the United States and Canada, there are around 300 of these schools, according to the Association of Boarding Schools, many on the East Coast but also around 25 in California, including seven in the Bay Area. Some are highly structured traditional institutions with campuses reminiscent of Harvard; others are creative or unconventional, and many offer unique (albeit expensive) experiences.
For example, there’s the Midland School where high schoolers learn horsemanship, grow their own organic food and raise steers on 2,800 acres of Santa Barbara County ranchland; or The Masters School near New York City, where teachers are facilitators rather than lecturers, and classmates sit around one table and lead the discussion; or the Idyllwild Arts Academy where students can major in arts ranging from drama to digital media in the Southern California mountains. The list of unusual schools goes on and on.
Advanced or Specialized Academics
Often local families look to boarding schools for their rigorous academic programs. Several schools are renowned both for outstanding academics and high acceptance to top colleges, but even lesser-known boarding schools tend to have low student-teacher ratios and prioritize strong student-teacher bonds, Boland says. The teachers don’t just lead students in the classroom but live on campus with them, getting “to know them and shape their lives in ways that one can’t do in a day school environment,” she adds.
A boarding school that emphasizes a specific (and sometimes niche) extracurricular activity such as a great volleyball team, Model United Nations or Science Olympiad may be enticing to some students, says Angela Sun, a Santa Clara-based tutor and admissions consultant. And there’s the bonus that there’s no need to commute to practice.
“You can save a lot of time not shuttling back and forth,” Sun says.
One of Sun’s students wanted to go out of state for high school to experience more independence and to attend a school that prioritized athletics. After applying to around 10 schools, he chose Avon Old Farms School, an all-boy high school in Connecticut, for its large sports community. He enjoyed school and excelled at lacrosse, which he continued playing in college after he was accepted at the University of Notre Dame.
Boland, too, has had several athletic clients who went to boarding school for their sports, thrived athletically and landed on top college teams.
The Need for Structure
Some families, however, seek out specialized boarding schools because they offer support for students with learning differences or provide needed structure and routine. Sun says boarding schools also can be a good choice if the parents have intense work or home responsibilities or a distressed relationship with their child.
“Where families have eroded relationships …the key benefit of boarding school attendance is that the student will gain more adult role models” whom they hopefully will trust and respect, she says.
The Simone family of Morgan Hill looked into boarding schools several years ago when their 12-year-old son was struggling academically and socially at school and also causing upheaval at home, his mom, Francine Simone, says.
Since he admired the military from an early age, the Simones began searching, with his agreement, for a military school. They compiled an extensive list of questions for each school, from the basics like tuition, class size and distance from home, to school policies on issues like supervision, student conflict and discipline.
If the Simones couldn’t find the answer on school websites, they scheduled calls with school officials. Once they narrowed down the options, their son helped choose Camden Military Academy in South Carolina.
In his three semesters there, he loved the sports and leadership opportunities and made many strides.
Happy With the Choice
“The military environment was full of structure that he craved and needed and was not getting at home because of all the distractions that needed to be done with three children going in different directions,” Simone says. “Our son also had learning disabilities that needed to be given more attention in the school environment. The smaller classrooms and one-on-one attention really helped (him) thrive academically.”
The biggest benefit, she says,, was that family life became calmer for the Simones while their son was away, and in that calm, they were able to reach out and improve their relationship with their son.
But Simone says the boarding school experience wasn’t without problems. Her son neglected hygiene often, and school officials didn’t seem to notice. He often failed to send out his laundry though his parents paid for it and he came home needing dental work. When he complained of mistreatment by classmates, all his mother could do was offer support over the phone.
“You have to put your Mama Bear card in your pocket and wait everything out,” she says.
Boland agrees there are risks to sending a youngster to boarding school. Being away from family support can exacerbate mental health issues. The stakes for breaking school rules are high; the student may be expelled rather than the issue being handled at home among family.
Teen Buy-In
She adds that boarding school can’t be foisted on a child; he or she needs to want to go and be responsible enough to handle the freedom.
Sun, for her part, feels it’s often better for tweens and teens to stay home where their parents can be a positive influence on them.
The Cons
One of the biggest downsides of boarding school attendance is the tuition. Annual tuition for seven-day boarding school typically runs $35,000 to $90,000 (with California schools being among the most expensive). That compares with Bay Area private day schools, which run around $20,000 to $65,000.
Boland points out, though, that boarding schools have endowments that let them provide extensive financial aid. Many school websites state that around half their students get financial aid, with students receiving full tuition if needed.
One of Boland’s clients in the Bay Area wanted their son to go to boarding school as his father had. They found a school with “a very tight community, a beautiful bucolic campus, and teachers who had tabs on him at all times of day,” she says.
“Most significantly, he was able to get more financial aid than he was offered at local schools,” Boland says. “This made all the difference for his family.”
To pick a school that best meets their needs, financial or otherwise, families need to do their research, local admissions advisors say.
Making the Right Choice
Family members should discuss what they all want in a school and compile a list of potential schools that meet the criteria, not just the big names, but the “likely to admit” schools and those with unique features that fit their student. After narrowing them down to several favorites, the family needs to complete the applications, write the student (and often the parent) essays, meet deadlines and visit favorite schools before registering for one.
It can be a stressful process. There are many details to manage, and making the right choice is important, since transferring to another school later is not easy.
Education consultants can help. A good consultant helps a student showcase their unique abilities in their applications and has a deep knowledge of the schools and their application requirements. Boland says she typically visits a couple dozen boarding schools on both coasts and meets with around 30 boarding school representatives in San Francisco each year. (When hiring an education advisor, consider those who belong to a trade group like the Independent Education Consultant Association, or IECA, which requires strict ethical standards of members.)
Overall, their clients who have chosen boarding school have been very satisfied, Sun and Boland say.
“Students generally love the freedom, and the opportunity to be immersed in an environment that was designed for teenagers, in a beautiful place, and where they have the chance to do something a little different from the typical high school experience,” Boland says.
Parents, meanwhile, appreciate that boarding school often cultivates all the attributes they “typically want to instill in their children: independence, self-reliance, resilience, responsibility, and grit,” she says.
For the Bell Family of San Francisco, the benefits of their son, Sanders’ attendance the last three years at Proctor Academy in New Hampshire have been many.
One is Proctor’s integrated Learning Skills program.
“The kids really learn how to manage their workload and can get help during the day versus after classes or weekends,” Michele Bell says. “If he’s feeling like he could use some help with an assignment or just executive function, he can pop in and see someone, where if he was home, he’d have to have a tutor after school. He has just learned a lot about how to advocate for himself and has become a more independent learner, which we appreciate so much.”
For Sanders, the biggest perk is getting to participate in his favorite sports right on campus.
“He mountain bikes in the fall, in glorious New England colors! He skis in the winter – doing backflips when he was a blue skier to start – and plays baseball in the spring,” Bell says. “There is no school in San Francisco that offers all that, and it really makes him so happy.”
Angela Geiser is a frequent contributor to Bay Area Parent.
