A Private School’s Ads Imply Public School Slippage
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Published: May 31, 2010
SADDLE RIVER, N.J. — The mad scramble for places in renowned urban private schools does not apply out here in the well-off suburbs. Parents here tend to think highly of their local public schools, while the nearby private schools often have empty slots and turn away relatively few students.
Yana Paskova for The New York Times
Eileen Lambert is head of the Saddle River Day School in New Jersey. Its enrollment has declined by nearly 10 percent, to 300.
Still, the suburban private schools, like their city cousins, survive on the qualities that set them apart from public schools: small classes, flexibility, extracurricular activities, sophisticated courses. The differences are so well understood that they are usually not noted.
But for the last few weeks, the Saddle River Day School has been advertising in local newspapers — a departure, in itself, for many private schools — with a pitch subtly pointing out that at a time when New Jersey public schools are cutting back, Saddle River Day is not.
Over a photo of a teacher engaged with a single student, each ad has a headline like “Skimping on science isn’t smart,” or “Skimping on world language isn’t smart.” All of them point to the school’s low student-teacher ratio and its enviable rate of graduates headed to top colleges.
Budget-cutting in public schools “has sparked me personally and us as a school because what they are cutting is not good for children,” said Eileen Lambert, head of school at Saddle River Day.
The ad campaign comes at a moment of paradoxes. The recession that has prompted public schools to trim programs and increase class sizes, making private school more