Saturday, January 30, 1999
Magnet school signup shows opposites attract
Alternative programs grow
BY DANA DiFILIPPO
The Cincinnati Enquirer
WHERE TO SIGN UP
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Parents can call 684-4172 from a touch-tone phone beginning at 7 a.m. for site locations.
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Like teens waiting for concert tickets to go on sale, Cincinnati Public Schools parents will line up by the hundreds this morning to register their children for the district's popular magnet programs.
And as Catholic schools throughout the Tristate celebrate Catholic Schools Week next week, many administrators report their enrollment already is booked for next year.
Such registration races signal the ever-burgeoning demand for alternatives to standard public school programs in Greater Cincinnati.
Catholic schools report long waiting lists, and home schooling and charter schools continue to grow in popularity — all symptoms of a growing challenge to the traditional concept of neighborhood schools.
“There's a credibility issue with public education,” said Dick Murphy, admissions and financial aid director at St. Xavier High School in Finneytown.
“Whether or not it's a good school system, the tax structure worries a lot of parents. They say: "If that levy doesn't pass, are they going to cut the AP (Advanced Placement) program, the sports program, the extracurriculars?' After awhile, people just don't want to take chances.”
When Mr. Murphy started his job 23 years ago, about 500 kids took St. Xavier's admissions test. This year, about 950 were tested, and administrators accepted about half, Mr. Murphy said. The 1,400-student school, which draws from 120 communities in the Tristate, is Ohio's largest Catholic high school.
Morals also are missing from public schools, one Catholic school administrator said, which may steer some students to private education.
“People really want that guidance and structure for their children,” said Sharon Redmond, director of curriculum and admissions at Ursuline Academy, where about 560 girls tested to join a freshman class of 165 this year.
When Ursuline officials tried a first-come, first-served enrollment process two years ago, some parents rented rooms in nearby hotels so they'd be early enough to ensure their children's admittance to the prestigious private school in Blue Ash.
Northside resident Jani Coffey has other reasons for seeking alternative schools for her children.
“The neighborhood schools are just not a safe place to get a good education,” said the mother of nine, who plans to rise early todayto try to enroll three of her sons in Cincinnati Public Schools' magnet programs.
Ms. Coffey participated in last year's “Super Saturday” registration for her other children and remembers the experience as “unpleasant.”
“The parents are real testy and protective of their place in line,” she said. “It becomes ugly because people are so afraid because they're not going to be accepted.”
Other trends evidencing that demand:
• About 1,900 parents were turned away last year from Cincinnati Public Schools' magnet programs. Officials are reluctant to create more magnet programs, which tend to draw higher-performing and higher-income students, because they want to improve the district's struggling neighborhood schools.
• Catholic school enrollment in the 19-county Archdiocese of Cincinnati has risen about 10 percent in the past decade, from about 51,800 students in 1987-88 to 57,100 in 1997-89, according to the archdiocese.
• The home-schooled population in Kentucky more than doubled since 1990. More than 71,000 children are home-schooled in Ohio, according to the National Center for Home Education.
• Two years after state lawmakers approved a charter-school law to spur competition in public schools, 16 charter schools have opened statewide, including two in Cincinnati. Twenty-eight more, including five in Cincinnati, have applied to the Ohio Department of Education to open this fall. Cincinnati's two existing charter schools — Harmony Community School in Bond Hill and Oak Tree Montessori downtown — also have long waiting lists.
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