At first, Dedra Waggener couldn't imagine sending her only child away to learn. She believed boarding schools were for kids who were rich or bad. "My son," she said firmly, "is neither."
Waggener's opinion of boarding schools changed when she visited the Thacher School, a 350-acre campus in the Los Padres National Forest near Ojai. Here, every freshman receives a horse, and students learn Chinese and political philosophy in classes of no more than 11.
School directors offered a full scholarship to her son, Christopher Thomas, 13, who grew up in the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles. Waggener accepted the deal: Thomas would receive a top education -- which typically costs $32,750 annually -- free, and Thacher would add a smart, determined minority student from a low-income family to its increasingly diverse enrollment.
Recruiters from independent schools across the country have long grappled with how to diversify their campuses. School directors increasingly are turning to Boys and Girls Clubs, rural neighborhoods and inner-city campuses looking for students such as Thomas, who are hardworking and principled.
Ethnic diversity on these campuses has risen 4% in the last decade, largely because of increased financial aid and international recruitment. Another factor has been a rise in the number of minority families willing to pay full tuition to flee troubled public campuses, school operators say.
Thacher's financial aid pool received a boost recently with a $10-million donation from the estate of an alumnus. Intended to increase diversity on campus, it was the largest gift ever awarded to the school.
Students nationwide received more than $694 million in financial aid to attend nearly 900 independent schools last year. The percentage of students receiving financial aid at boarding schools has tripled in the last 20 years, according to the Assn. of Boarding Schools.
Some public school advocates say that while the push to integrate private schools is laudable, it is based on the "automatic assumption that private is better than public," said Michael Pons of the National Education Assn. Some of these campuses, he added, patronizingly view scholarships as a good opportunity "for these poor unfortunates."
Peter Bachmann, board president of the California Assn. of Independent Schools, said that although these schools strive to attract hardworking students, they do not want to be "bastions of privilege."
