'Interest is coming from lots of places' | Private and charter schools see a rise in enrollment

Parents of school-aged kids have been divided, both over in-school or virtual learning and whether masks should be required.

Several Greensboro private and charter schools said because of the pandemic education has been top of mind for many parents and interest in other avenues besides public school is growing.

"Interest is coming from lots of places," Kim Freedman the Head of School at New Garden Friends School said. 

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She said their enrollment for this upcoming fall is right under 300 students.

"That's a good number for us," Freedman said. "I've had a lot of interest since the pandemic began. Like I said people want their kids back in school and I think last year made people stop and think what is my child getting out of education."

Freedman said they had a lot of families switch to them during the pandemic last year.

"What's great for us we take all that great guidance from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, but that's a starting point for us. We have lots more flexibility," Freedman said.

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Private schools are not the only ones seeing more interest.

Alton Woods is the board chair at Guilford Preparatory Academy, a charter school.

"There's a variety of things that go into that decision and we recognize that the public school system does an awesome job taking care of kids as well, but there's a choice environment that we live in where parents tend to look for good fits for their student," Woods said.

Guilford Preparatory Academy has a current enrollment of 525 students for this fall. Woods said that is the highest they've ever had, but they also recently just built a larger campus.

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As for Greensboro Day School, it keeps seeing new applicants.

"Since the beginning of the pandemic we have seen a large increase in interest in applications to the school," Jeff Topham, the Director of Strategic Communications at Greensboro Day School, said. 

A majority of the private and charter schools in Greensboro said they are following a lot of the state's recommendations. Most of them have plans for students to wear masks.