Coming home in the red envelopes today are November Conference Confirmation Letters. Please verify you can conference with your child's teacher at the time he/she scheduled for you, and return the bottom of the letter to the teacher tomorrow or Monday.

The date and time on the Conference Confirmation Letter was based on the request you made in the recent Parent Survey. Thanks for 2-parent families making every effort to have both mom and dad at this upcoming conference. Remember that we also want grade 1-8 students to attend at least part of the conference. (We'll have supervision in the library on our November 25-26 conference days, so children can wait there and watch a movie during their siblings' conferences.)

Speaking of the Parent Survey, you recall that it also asked you for input on the future class sizes and tuition rates for St. Louise. Thank you for sharing your views, elaborating on reasons for your answers and asking us questions. I'll be sharing the results of the survey soon, but for now I'd like to answer the following common questions that parents repeatedly asked on their surveys. 

Q) Is decreased enrollment localized to St. Louise or happening across other Seattle Archdiocesan Catholic schools?

A) When it reached its high-point in the mid-1960s, the nation's Catholic K-12 education system educated more than 5 million children in its schools. Since that time, the number of students in Catholic schools has decreased to today's figure of 1.8 million - a loss around 65%. Locally, our Seattle Archdiocese had 23,324 students enrolled in K-12 in 2008, and just 10 years later in 2018, this number was 15,417 - a decrease of 34%. At St. Louise, our enrollment in 2008 was 445, and we dropped to 361 in 2018 - a decrease of 19%. 

Q) If the worry of paying private school tuition is keeping prospective school families from enrolling, do they know that tuition assistance scholarships are available? 

A) We certainly try to clearly mention that financial aid is available - in our school marketing materials to prospective families and to current families during every re-enrollment period. HERE is what we show on our website about tuition assistance.

Q) Do you know why families who were once enrolled ended up leaving St. Louise in recent years?

A) We typically request exit-interviews of families who inform us they are not returning the next year to St. Louise. There has not been a common thread from these interviews regarding why they're leaving. Moving out of the area, not being able to afford tuition (even with our offer of a scholarship), or wanting to start in public school in the middle school so to "prepare" for public high school come up most often as reasons for switching schools. It's important to note that our middle school class sizes have been fairly steady, since for every student who might leave during those years, a new student transfers in. The biggest issue isn't students in the intermediate or upper grade levels leaving; it's that we aren't getting 50+ people applying for kindergarten as we did in years past. 

Q) What marketing efforts have you tried? Do you go to preschool fairs? Do you market to Microsoft employees? Have you thought of offering a tuition credit if a current family refers a new family who ends up enrolling?

A) Our marketing committee, under the direction of our development office and me, has marketed St. Louise more aggressively in the past 5 years than in the previous 25 years combined. Everything is being tried - from attendance at the Eastside Preschool Fair, to yard signs in neighborhoods and along thoroughfares advertising our Open Houses. We realize we need to continue to improve how we use social media, as although our Facebook presence has been good,  young parents aren't necessarily checking Facebook these days. So we started an Instagram page, and we hope you'll start mentioning @stlouiseschool and #stlouisebellevue in your posts. Soon we will be having an outside consultant lead us in a strategy session for promoting our school. Of course, what was true 25 years ago is true today - the best marketing for St. Louise School is word of mouth. We need our current school parents to talk up the school to their coworkers, neighbors, and friends. And yes, we offer a tuition credit if a current family refers a new family, so it indeed "pays" to spread the word about St. Louise! Cindy can give you more information on our referral program.

As I said, the survey results will be shared soon, so you can then see how many fellow parents are more worried about future class sizes and how many parents think future tuition rates are more critical. The survey results and all of your comments, questions, and ideas are being shared with our Finance Committee and Marketing Committee to help them formulate plans. 

In closing, I'd like to share this one parent's comments on his/her completed survey: