As public school enrollment continues to decline across the country, traditional Christian schools in the deep blue city of San Francisco are gaining attention, according to a new report.
Three religious schools have opened across the Bay Area in the past five years, offering students a traditional liberal arts education, according to the San Francisco Standard, which has been chronicling this growth trend.
Donum Dei Classical Academy, which touts a Bible-based curriculum for kindergarten through eighth grade, may seem out of place in a Bernal Heights neighborhood “adorned with rainbow Pride flags.” Its influence is growing. The report said:.
The small school has reportedly grown by 25 students since opening in 2019, and donations have soared from $45,692 the same year to $773,319 in 2023.
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Classical Christian schools are on the rise in San Francisco. (Reuters)
Donum Dei includes Nativity High School, a private Catholic school that opened this fall with 20 students in Inner Richmond, and St. John of San Francisco Orthodox Church, a K-12 school in Inner Richmond with 25 students. , joining other classical Christian schools in the city. The former Catholic school, located on the same campus as Richmond and Nativity, opened in 1994, and since reinventing itself in 2014, student numbers have doubled to 86 students. 2021,” the Standard reported.
Officials told the newspaper that parents who seek a curriculum that incorporates “tradition, faith and conservative values” are drawn to these schools.
Marilyn Bridon, an art teacher at Stella Maris, said that many of their schools are struggling in that “woke” books are routinely removed from school libraries and preferred “pronouns” are not up for debate. He explained how the school is different from public schools.
An administrator and teacher at another classical school, St. John's of San Francisco Orthodox Academy, explained that parents have expressed that they do not want their children's education to be “left-leaning.”
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Parents seeking a faith-based classical education for their children are increasingly turning to San Francisco's Classical Christian Schools, according to a new report. (St. Petersburg)
“Many people in our community say it's important to them that we don't move too far to the left,” Helen Sinelnikov-Nowak said in the report. “I'm not preaching to parents, but I'm listening to them. That's what they want.”
The classical education movement is gaining momentum as parents seek alternatives to public schools. According to the Association of Classical Christian Schools, as of 2023, there are 502 schools registered with that organization in the United States.
While these schools are opening across the country, public school enrollment is declining in America's most populous cities, according to a recent report.
A report released by the association in June found that from 2013 to 2022, public school enrollment nationwide decreased by 2% from 49.9 million to 48.8 million, the lowest level in decades. It has fallen to . Manhattan Institute.
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FOX News' Kendall Teets contributed to this report.
