Drop in Applications Tests D.C. Area Private Schools

At St. Andrews Episcopal School in Potomac, tuition in 2003-04 was about $20,000, but families recently learned that 2008-09 tuition for high school students there will cost $29,960. (School officials told parents that the 6 percent increase over this year's tuition is the lowest jump in a decade.)

The 2006-07 tuition tab at St. Albans School in the District was $26,501 for a day student, $13,000 more than a decade earlier. This year it is $28,860. Schools say the tuition increases have been necessary because personnel costs continue to rise rapidly. And several say the percentage increase for the next school year will be the smallest in years.

Officials at independent schools, institutions supported mostly by tuition and independently governed by trustees, say that over time they worried about rising tuition but that people kept coming.

"Historically, there is no reason to believe that there will be a breaking price point," Goldblatt said. "We worried when the price hit $9,000 to $10,000. Fifteen was another point, then $18,000, $20,000. Now it's $30,000. This has been an elastic market."

However, he said, changing demographics are affecting the dynamic.

Susanna A. Jones, head of the Holton-Arms School for girls, referred to the demographic decline in an e-mail she sent Feb. 15 to lower-school parents, some of whom had become upset with plans to shift resources. Jones told parents that she wanted to consolidate resources in the lower school -- increase class size slightly -- and redistribute them in the upper school, "where demand is high" and where "the current junior class represents the demographic peak of the baby boomlet."

Jones declined to comment.

Private schools increasingly have used financial assistance to bring economic and racial diversity to the student body. But as the economy slows, officials are having to provide more aid. Even families with children enrolled are seeking additional help.

The 84 schools in the Association of Independent Schools of Greater Washington -- institutions in the District, Northern Virginia and the Maryland suburbs -- collectively spent about $37 million for financial aid in 2001-02 and more than doubled that to about $76 million for this year, according to data provided by the organization.

The number of schools facing a decline in enrollment is small. But Bassett said his organization is working with struggling schools to reengineer finances and institute new discipline. Some schools are freezing hiring and ensuring that new programs are offset with the retirement of old ones. Some schools are cutting back programs and operating joint foreign language programs with other schools, officials said.

And they are looking for new ways to raise revenue. Georgetown Preparatory School in North Bethesda struck a deal last year to raise revenue by leasing four acres on its campus to a developer. The school will get $888 million over the course of the 99-year lease.

"Schools are going to have to think out of the box from now on," Bassett said. "How do you exploit the capital you have? Schools have physical capital, and they have intellectual capital, and they have social capital. . . . The future will be [operating] 24-7."