Tag Archives: parochial

Forgive me if I act a little sleepy today. I stayed up past my bedtime last night to watch the finals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. And after that, I was too excited to go to sleep. When I’m old enough, I want to be on ESPN and national TV, too — competing for the top prize as spelling champion. Think I can do it? For now, I look forward to rooting for Tim Ruiter in 2010. The homeschooler from Centreville, Virginia, finished as runner-up this time around. (Next year, maybe Colorado spellers will advance farther, too.) I like Tim’s attitude. He told the Washington Post: Tim said that he plans to be back next year and that he’ll take only a short break — “I’ll go to bed” — before he resumes word study. “I’m glad that she won, because this was her last year,” he said.

Times are tough out there. I don’t have a lot of perspective yet, but there’s no doubt the economy is hurting. And that means not only are real people hurting, but – as the Wall Street Journal reports – so are private schools: Trinity Episcopal School survived Hurricane Ike last fall. But then another storm hit — the economy. The Galveston, Texas, school, where tuition is between $5,000 and $8,000 a year, has seen its enrollment drop 12%, says David Dearman, the head of the school. Many parents of its students were among the 3,000 workers laid off by the area’s largest employer, the University of Texas Medical Branch. At the end of 2008, the school’s endowment was $800,000, down about 20% from July. The school has ramped up donation efforts through its Web site, and held car washes and bake sales. It stopped using substitute teachers — other staff members now step in when a teacher is out sick. “Our school will survive, but it will take years to recover,” Mr. Dearman says. Trinity Episcopal School is one of many kindergarten-through-12th-grade private schools caught in the middle of an economic tempest: anemic endowments, dwindling donations, financially strapped parents slashing […]