Free of state standards and testing requirements, independent schools offer customized curriculum to suit all tastes.

At the teeny French bilingual school I attended from fifth to eighth grade, we dissected rabbits, kept a daily sketchbook, played an instrument, and took a three-week trip in a retrofitted school bus from Massachusetts to the Florida Everglades. With only 20 students in kindergarten through grade 12, I was literally the only kid in my grade. Later, at a college preparatory high school, I took classes in creative writing, philosophy, art history, and psychology. Because of the high school’s small size of 200, I found success in areas like sports and student government that may have been out of my reach in an environment with larger classes and less individual attention.

Small classes of typically fewer than 20 students are perhaps the biggest attraction of independent schools, defined as nonprofit private schools with their own governing board of trustees. While most people commonly refer to independent schools as private, lumping them in with parochial and for profit schools, they are distinct because they are nonprofit and self-governing. Most of the East Bay’s 43 accredited independent schools can and should boast freely about class size to prospective parents. They can also point to low student/teacher ratios, freedom from state standards and testing, and lots of extras like music, foreign languages, and art that are underfunded or nonexistent in public schools.

In the last 30 years, the number of independent schools in the East Bay has more than doubled. “Parents are in an advantageous position because they have so many choices,” says Tom Little, co-founder and director of Park Day School in Oakland. While this increase is partly due to a rise in population combined with more schools becoming accredited, it’s also due to parents looking for more school options for their children and starting those schools themselves. “Most of our schools are started by parents seeking a particular kind of education that might not be available in their area,” says Mimi Baer, executive director of the 190-member California Association of Independent Schools. Independent schools have increased financial aid, reached out to more students of color and different socio-economic backgrounds, and improved how they teach children with varying learning styles, Baer says. Schools also emphasize community service through school-wide and classroom projects more now than in past years.

Despite the expense of choosing an independent school—which ranges from about $12,000 to $23,000 a year—many parents feel that their children will thrive better in what they believe is a smaller, safer environment with more room for personal attention. Baer says that some families even have children in two different schools, if that’s what fits their kids’ needs best. While public schools must follow a curriculum heavily influenced by state standards, independent schools have more freedom to customize lessons to students’ individual ways of learning.

Figuring out the often subtle differences between independent schools can be daunting when many of the descriptions sound similar. Some have distinct educational philosophies like Waldorf or Montessori. Others focus on music, offer a girls-only student body, a year-round schedule, or teach their curriculum exclusively in French. The majority of independent schools, however, fall somewhere in between. They describe their curricula with phrases like “child-centered learning,” “social and emotional growth,” and “diversity awareness.” Some openly define their educational mission using terms such as academic, progressive, or developmental, but others intentionally avoid those labels.

“To say that a school is progressive is not fair to that school or other schools,” says Catherine Epstein, director of admissions and financial aid at Oakland’s Head-Royce School. “You could use every label and still find that parents are nervous.”

“To try to pigeonhole schools like that is a huge mistake,” agrees Gail Berland, an educational consultant and one of the founders of the Prospect School (now Prospect Sierra) in El Cerrito. “You could list a dozen K-8 schools here in the East Bay, and on paper they might sound the same but they are very, very different.”

An easier, simpler way to begin thinking about which independent school may be right for your child is to look at how the school is structured. For example, some of the East Bay’s independent schools do not assign homework; others group different grades together in one classroom; some are structured as K through 12, and others teach only elementary grades.

While daunting, the search for the right independent school need not be overwhelming. “Start at least a year early. Think about what is important to you and your family and your child. Start with some basic ground rules like you would when you’re looking to buy a house,” advises Carol Clark, director of admissions at Berkeley Montessori.

Make a list of what matters most. Perhaps it’s that the school is diverse, emphasizes the arts, or has a grassy play area. It could also be that your child needs before-school care, elementary grades only, or a dance studio. Talk to families already at the school and don’t be afraid to ask tough questions.

Above all, ignore the neighborhood and cocktail party chatter and pay attention to your own instincts and observations. Says educational consultant Gail Berland, “Stay focused on your own child and your own needs and don’t be swayed by what everyone else is saying.”

The Long Embrace: K-12

Only three independent East Bay schools go from kindergarten through twelfth grade: Head-Royce School in Oakland, Bentley School in Oakland and Lafayette, and East Bay Waldorf School in El Sobrante. The obvious advantage to sticking with one school for 13 years is enduring only one rigorous and time-consuming application process. Younger children can also benefit from having older students and sophisticated facilities nearby—such as at Head-Royce, where all students have access to a swimming pool, theater, gymnasium, and sports fields located on 14 acres in the Oakland hills. Sometimes the instruction carries over as well. After a high school class dissected a sheep’s eye at Head-Royce, for example, the science teacher brought the same eye to the kindergartners for an anatomy lesson.

“What has worked for us is to create a unique culture, the fusion of academic excellence and the promotion and understanding of diversity that makes our society strong,” says Paul Chapman, head of the school where 100 percent of graduates go on to college and 40 percent of the 750 students are children of color.

Bentley School, which has grown to 690 students in grades K through 12, is also known for its commitment to academic excellence and college preparation. “We never underestimate children. There is such tremendous potential in every child,” says Headmaster Rick Fitzgerald.

The 305-student East Bay Waldorf School, a K-12 school since 2004, takes a different approach than Head-Royce and Bentley. Based on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, who founded the first Waldorf school in Germany in 1919, the school is unique in assigning a single teacher who stays with the same class from first through eighth grade. The Waldorf philosophy sets out to educate the whole child through the “head, heart, and hands.” The curriculum is grounded in arts and crafts—every Waldorf student learns to knit—incorporating baking, gardening, art, and music into most academic subjects. “The entire curriculum is designed to meet the developmental stages of the growing human being,” says Judy July, enrollment and outreach coordinator.

Located on 11 acres and boasting the first straw bale building in Contra Costa County, East Bay Waldorf is the only local Waldorf option.

Tots through Teens: K-8

The largest group of East Bay independent schools educates children from kindergarten through eighth grade. A few others take children through only fifth grade.

One such K-8 school is Berkeley Montessori School, one of many preschools and elementary schools based on the educational methods of Maria Montessori, who developed the Montessori method in Rome a century ago. Two hallmarks of Montessori education are multi-age classrooms (each spanning three years) and child-led learning. The K-5 Aurora School in Oakland also combines two grades into one classroom.

Grouping different ages together gives younger children a chance to learn skills from older children and older children a way to teach younger ones. “Children are very accepting of learning from each other,” says Carol Clark of Berkeley Montessori. “When you’re the older one, you help the younger child unzip their jacket or tie their shoes. Certain things happen in the brain when you’re teaching it to someone else.”

Montessori teachers also believe that children work best at their own pace. In the classroom, students can choose work from all grade levels. For example, a first-grader with advanced reading skills may pick books at a fifth-grade level and math at a first-grade level.

At Beacon Day School in Oakland, its 250 students are missing two things that most other students have: homework and summer vacation. Located in a former cotton mill in an industrial neighborhood south of Jack London Square, Beacon was founded 24 years ago by Executive and Educational Director Thelma Farley as a developmentally responsive, year-round school that does not assign homework until fifth grade. Children learn in groups with other children moving at the same pace. These groups change all the time because “children learn at different rates,” says Jan Stone, director of marketing and communications. The no-homework policy helps children preserve after-school time for their families.

Beacon was established as a year-round school to keep kids learning during the long summer months—originally a time when children helped out with the farming. “We are no longer an agrarian society so the kids don’t have to work in the fields,” Stone says. “If children don’t stop learning, why do we stop teaching them?”

Both the K-8 Park Day School, in Oakland’s Temescal neighborhood, and Aurora School describe themselves as having a progressive educational philosophy. Aurora’s literature defines progressive education as “not traditional,” where students are seen not as blank slates but as “self-reliant” learners and thinkers who ask questions. “We don’t shy away from that term [progressive],” says Tom Little, head of Park Day, where students can roam a tree-filled quarter-acre with a huge sand pit, gardens, play houses, and a turf field. Teachers assess students’ needs on an ongoing basis, working to balance social and emotional development with academic growth. “There is also a very strong commitment to social justice that weaves through the school,” Little says. Founded by teachers and parents in 1976, the school will become a K-8 this fall as it merges with the Community School of the East Bay.

Specialty Schools

A few East Bay independent schools operate as high schools only or as a middle school through high school.

Orinda Academy, for example, teaches 135 students in grades 7 through 12. Founded in 1982 to serve students who were not thriving in the public school system, it offers a personalized learning environment in small classes that average nine students.

“ A lot of students in this high-paced world buckle under the pressure of these traditional models and can’t survive,” says Paul Greenwood, director of admissions. “We are not putting kids in a competitive situation in which the race to college begins freshman year. Each kid has potential and we can bring that about in an anxiety-free structure.”

The Athenian School, with 450 students in grades 6-12, situated on 75 acres at the base of Mount Diablo, holds the distinction of being the only boarding school in the East Bay. Other local independent high schools include Maybeck High School in Berkeley and the College Preparatory School in Oakland.

If you’re looking for schools with a unique focus, the East Bay has a handful of specialty schools including Julia Morgan School for Girls, grades 6-8, in Oakland; and East Bay School for Girls, grades K-5, in Berkeley; the Crowden School in Berkeley, which combines academics with a chamber music program for students of strings, piano, and composition; Tehiyah Day School, a Jewish community school; the French bilingual Ecole Bilingue de Berkeley; and Pacific Boychoir Academy in Oakland, a school for boys in grades 4-8 where every student sings in the choir. Born out of an ongoing after-school program, Pacific Boychoir’s structure allows students to rehearse every day and easily attend performances and tours.

Rest assured, promise school experts, there is a school out there to suit every child. When I began high school, it was a good moment for me to be a big fish in a quirky, small pond, guided by an attentive faculty adviser. On a typical day, I would leave my physics class to head to modern dance, where the final exam was to choreograph and perform my own dance, and then quickly change clothes in time for my four-student Latin class. My own independent school experience, though it was several decades ago, helped nudge and nurture me in directions I might not have considered.

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A freelance writer living in Oakland with her husband and two school-aged children, Sarah Weld attended two different independent schools from grades 5 to 12 and taught high school English at another.