Palo Alto Area Private Schools

Does anyone have any information about private schools in the Bay Area? People I speak with rave about the public schools, but I am more interested in private day schools or boarding schools. The only one I can find is Woodside Priory. I would think that this area would have lots given the wealth in the region.

Besides the Priory, I know of Castilleja (all girls), Menlo School, St Ignatius (Jesuit - in the city), Bellarmine (Jesuit,l all boys, San Jose), Crystal Springs Uplands (Hillsborough). Kids from the peninsula go up to the city or down to San Jose, too. Many schools have transportation to/from the peninsula.

The Harker School in San Jose and San Francisco University High in San Francisco are top notch private schools in By Area.

There are many private schools throughout the Bay Area. Are you specifically interested in the Palo Alto area?

Junipero Serra in San Mateo: all boys, Catholic.

Also Sacred Heart in Atherton and Notre Dame in Belmont (high school is all girls).

I was going to mention Sacred Heart in Atherton.

Here’s the thing…BECAUSE of the wealth in the region, the public schools are amazing (though some are said to be pressure cookers). My friends who live in the area (one of which is an Exeter grad) are very pro-public school or at least pro-charter school. They are not at all (at least not yet, their kids are still younger) interested in private schools…day or boarding. If I can echo some of the sentiments expressed here about the NE boarding schools, I think they feel that “why would you send your kid to private school when the public schools are so good?” And truthfully, given the cost of real estate out there, I’d hope the public schools are good.

The Athenian School is a boarding school in the Bay area with a good reputation.

Pressure cooker is a good description - the Palo Alto public high schools have a suicide problem.

We are hoping to switch to private school for 6th because the course options are unacceptably limited at the public schools. Prop 13 (limiting property tax increases) has really hurt school funding. Our options are basically to go public and put our child in math and foreign language classes outside of school, or to pay for private.

I know several people who live in the Palo Alto/Peninsula area who have chosen private over public. Yes, the public schools produce many kids with great SAT scores and tons of APs, and many people are very happy with them. However, they are best for a certain type of student and family, and if you want something different then you go for private - same as anyplace else.

Interestingly, you find more diversity in the private schools than in some of the suburban public schools, which is one of the reasons people choose them. The “pressure cooker” environment that @stracciatella mentions is well-deserved. Palo Alto and the surrounding communities are very homogeneous, lifestyle-wise. Most families have at least one parent who went to Stanford or its equivalent and works in the tech industry. No matter how much you tell kids that you want them to find their own passion, there’s an undercurrent of one path to success that’s hard to ignore - hence the pressure.