9/11 scare over for private schools
By Jennifer Hiller
Advertiser Education Writer
When the phones fell silent for two weeks after Sept. 11, it was one of the scariest times Pat Liu has known.
As director of admissions at Iolani School, Liu typically fields calls, mails out application packets and talks to prospective students and families all fall.
"It's when we usually get tons of calls and it was silent," Liu said. "That's when the paranoia set in."
As the state's tourism-dependent economy took a nosedive last fall and has since failed to regain its former strength, Liu and other officials at private schools across Hawai'i have kept a close watch on enrollment and worried about the number of applications coming into their mailboxes.
But now that tuition deposits are rolling in for next year and schools are closing out their admissions season, many private school officials have expressed relief that the Sept. 11 scare seems to be over. Enrollment at private schools, which has remained stable at about 32,500 students statewide for more than a decade, so far hasn't changed with the slumping economy.
For Liu, the phone calls from interested families started pouring in again last October.
"We had more applications this year than we did last year," Liu said. "All the things Iolani was worried about didn't materialize. I was expecting there to be much more of an impact."
Robert Witt, executive director of the Hawai'i Association of Independent Schools, said he also had major concerns as more parents with tourism-related jobs were laid off or had their hours cut.
In the early 1990s following the Persian Gulf War and a similar dip in tourism, applications to private schools diminished. Although HAIS does not track statewide admissions or application data, Witt said he was worried the same phenomenon might happen again because of Sept. 11.
To prevent students from having to withdraw from private schools during the school year, the Hawai'i Community Foundation stepped in with $600,000 in emergency tuition assistance for families laid off after Sept. 11.
HAIS and Hawai'i Catholic Schools administered the grant, $300,000 of which went to preschools across the state.
School officials say that the effort helped families get through the hardest times.
But Witt also suspects that Hawai'i networks of extended families pitched in to prevent kids from withdrawing from school this year.
"There may be some families that are suffering silently who haven't asked for help," Witt said. "Often grandma, grandpa, aunties and uncles will help out. I think there's a tendency for people to handle this as an extended family."
Witt said the real proof will come in late July and early August when the first tuition payments are due at schools. "Watchfulness is probably a good word. But there's no evidence that anything has changed," he said. "We may have seen the worst of this."
Lynne Uffmann, principal of St. Mark Lutheran School, is one of those principals looking to late summer as the real indicator of how the school has weathered the economic crisis. She said the only families who have left the schools are those who got military transfers and moved out of state.
"We're really lucky," she said. "I feel grateful. But we're not where I need to be in enrollment either. When we hit July 30, I might be singing another tune."
Dorothy Douthit, head of school at Academy of the Pacific, said the school has not lost any students. "We certainly granted a number of families some very flexible tuition payments," she said. "They lost jobs and took lower-paying jobs."
But this has been a banner year for both applications and academic performance, she said. Douthit suspects that it is because the small school specializes in helping students who have had difficulty at other campuses.
"In bad times we tend to have higher enrollment," she said. "We get the student the families are most concerned about. They tend to put their other kids into public schools and try to keep their troubled kids here."
Sister Joan of Arc Souza, principal of Saint Francis Schools, said one of her students qualified for the HCF tuition assistance grant.
"Our admissions for next year is right on target," Souza said. "I think we've gotten maybe more requests for financial aid, but that was probably because we had our first major tuition increase for the first time in a few years."
Despite the economy, the school plans to grow: Saint Francis will add an additional class of seventh graders next year.
Reach Jennifer Hiller at jhiller@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8084.
