To develop and sustain a ‘normalized’ Montessori class, we need a stable enrollment of children who enter at age 3 and continue for the full three-year-cycle. Naturally, we also need parents who will be supportive along the way. Ideally, our class should be made up of between twenty-four to thirty children, evenly divided between three-, four-, and five-year-old boys and girls. Only one third of the class should move on at the end of the year: ideally, they should all move on and continue through your elementary program, but that is a subject for another article.
Despite this fundamental need, many Montessori schools find that parents commonly remove their children at age four, which tends to make it difficult to normalize the class each year, and leads to a considerable lower level of academic development among the children, and appreciation among the parents for what could have been.
This may be the greatest challenge schools can face to the development of authentic Children’s House programs. As a school administrator or trustee, you should be clear about this pattern, and consciously work toward the day when attrition is kept very low. Here are some ways successful Montessori schools accomplish this goal.
- Establish the Right Policies from the Start
You need to be clear about your expectation that children will continue for at least the first full three-year-cycle, and parents should understand that every child in the class, including the ones who leave, lose something important when the oldest children, who both lead and teach the younger ones in the room, leave. Many schools have annual contracts which states that parents must fully intend to keep their child in the school until age six or later. It is a matter of honor that they do so.
- Use Your Parent Supporters Effectively
It is very important to defuse the influence of the parking lot recruited – parents who, having decided to transfer their children to the local public schools or another private school, stand in the parking lot enthusiastically urging their friends to follow. They want their friends to transfer their children as well to justify their position and to ensure that their child will not feel alone. Their process actually takes place all over town, at birthday parties, play dates, soccer games, and on the phone. The only antidote to this natural process is to encourage your parents who are committed to counteract the inaccurate information that is normally being spread by explaining why they are pleased with Montessori and your school from a positive parents perspective.
- Build In Financial Incentives
Generally it is a parents value systems, rather than income, which determines who stays. Some schools, however, find that offering a financial incentive to stay could be helpful. A $1,000 enrollment deposit or bond, collected at age three and four and applied to the third years tuition, or some times refunded after completion of the full three years, but forfeited if they do not stay for the third year, may be effective.
Also take a look at your schools’ pricing structure. A higher tuition charged for the third year (or any other higher level) is a disincentive for staying.
- Know Your Local Public Schools
There has been a huge and significant change in public schools in recent years: Our tax dollars are now covering full day kindergartens and after school care in public school, and that hurts private programs. After all, why should any family pay for a service available free from their local schools? The answer of course is that you will only succeed with parents who can see and appreciate the difference between your program and the local schools enough to pay for what you offer. Enrollment follows top quality programs.
- Build a Good Working Relationship With Your Local Public Schools:
It is not uncommon when parents transfer children from Montessori to local public schools for them to run into not to subtle remarks about how different the Montessori program and curriculum is from theirs, and what they must do to teach the child how to adjust. Ideally your school should have a strong elementary program, but whether you do, or do not, you can counteract some of this tension by developing a good relationship with the local elementary. As most schools understand how Montessori works, they tend to welcome children who transfer in at age six or later, despite the differences.
- Make it Clear That You Are a Real School, Not Child Care
Day care centers and child care programs play an important social role, but any authentic Montessori school offers a very different program. The issue is not the length of time that children spend with you; many Montessori schools have offered all day programs from the early 1900s. The difference is the stability of the relationships between children and adults, the special training of the teaching staff, and the sophistication of the curriculum. In many child care centers, group leaders have minimal professional education, are paid poorly, and turnover rates are often high.
As a Montessori program, you will want to foster parents’ perception that you are a “school”, and not a daycare center or typical nursery school.
Parents who are only looking for a preschool for their children at age three and four will rarely stay once free public kindergarten is available. This can be a simple matter of perception held in a parents mind. If you take yourself seriously, you will find many families begin to do so as well.
